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Norway took place only during the summer, but the Germans early
tried to establish themselves permanently in our chief commercial
town, Bergen, by being allowed to winter there. The Norwegians
for a long time strove to prevent this, and even as late as about
the year 1300, the number of Germans wintering there does not
seem to have been very large. During the latter half of the 14th
century, however, and still more in the 15th century, when Norway,
from various reasons, was materially as well as politically much
weakened, the Hansards gained more and more the upper hand
over the Norwegian merchant class, notwithstanding their stubborn
and to some extent very bitter resistance. The Hansards (from Lubeck
especially), were most domineering in Bergen, where they
sometimes committed various acts of violence and aggression against
the citizens of the town. The foreigners (especially from Rostock)
were also very troublesome to the Norwegian merchants in the
principal commercial towns in the eastern part of the country,
Tønsberg and Oslo; and at the beginning of the 16th century,
when the efforts to put an end to the foreign commercial
domination were finally crowned with success, these towns were very much
reduced in strength. Bergen, on the other hand, on account of
its lively fishing trade, continued for a long time to be the most
important commercial town of Scandinavia; and here for
generations the Hansards still struggled perseveringly for their
commercial supremacy. To a certain extent, they were kept in check
by the energetic king Christian II at the beginning of the
16th century; and in the years from 1557 to 1560 they were
compelled to respect the laws of the country, and ceased to form
practically a state within the state; but they continued to keep
the greater part of the commerce of Bergen in their hands until
the growing supremacy of the Dutch on the sea, and the Thirty
Years’ War (1618—1648) had weakened them in their own country.
The «German factory» in Bergen, however, continued to exist until
the middle of the 18th century, although the commerce was more
and more transferred to the townspeople.
Even during the period of greatest depression, the Norwegian
burgher-class was not entirely annihilated [1]; and other foreigners
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