Europe was as renowned for its textiles in the Middle Ages as today. Many and various fabrics were produced, whether from indigenous fibres such as wool, flax and hemp, from fibres primarily imported such as silk and cotton, or from mixtures of both such as that of cotton with wool or flax. But of all its textiles woollens may well take pride of place. Not only were they manufactured in all parts of the continent and worn by all classes of the community, from the humblest rustic in his coarse burel to the man of rank and fashion dressed in cloth so fine that it was almost like silk. But they were one of the chief articles of exchange within Europe itself, and they were Europe's principal export to the continents of Asia, Africa and, for a short space, America. The Vikings, venturing westwards across the Atlantic in the eleventh century, carried cloth to barter with the North Americans for furs; so too the Italians, traversing Asia to the court of the Great Khan in the thirteenth century, took with them presents of cloth, and to the end of the Middle Ages Europe's woollens were marketed in bulk at the Mediterranean gateways of Asia and Africa. Widely dispersed as the industry was, three regions became pre-eminent above all others for the large-scale manufacture of woollens – Italy, England, and what may best be described by the Latin term Belgica, that is to say the land between the Somme and the Moselle.