It could, because in the timeframe the paper is about, they were geographically near, but had no real direct connection to speak of. Traveling over land along branches of the 'old salt routes' took at least two days, and that was fast. They were transport hubs of different branches of the early Hanseatic League.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

This is not the equivalent of a 'spelling error'.