Today we will talk about the Bryggen, the famous Hanseatic Kontor or trading post in Bergen in western Norway. Bergen itself was never a member of the Hanseatic League, but like The St. Peter’s yard in Novgorod, the steelyard in London and the Kontor of Bruges, the Bryggen in Bergen was a key element of the Hanseatic trading network.

The trade in stockfish from Bergen was never on the same scale as the herring trade off Scania or the trade in beeswax and furs from Novgorod, but it was an important springboard for members of the lower classes to join the long-distance merchants. And the way the Hanse was able to gain a stranglehold over the proud Vikings of Norway is a cautionary tale of failed macro-economic policies.

If you think the Norwegians are unique in falling prey to aggressive Hanseatic trade policies, think again. Even the mighty Bruges, the warehouse of the medieval world” was made to grant these merchants from the Holy Roman empire far reaching privileges.

Some have considered these events as the beginnings of a long process of specialisation in Europe that condemned the East to become the giant breadbasket that fed the industrialising West. I doubt things are that simple, but let’s have a look at the different arguments….

The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.

As always:

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For this episode I again relied

heavily on:

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz: (3)

Rules of Inclusion, Rules of Exclusion: The Hanseatic Kontor in Bergen in the

Late Middle Ages and its Normative Boundaries | arvids alvea - Academia.edu

Carsten Mueller Boysen: Die Deutsche Bruecke in Bergen in Die Hanse,

Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, herausgegeben von Jürgen Bracker, Volker Henn

and Rainer Postel

Philippe Dollinger: Die Hanse

Rolf Hammel-Kieslow: Die Hanse