Abstract
This paper explores the limits of the Hanseatic Diet’s ability to regulate Hanseatic trade with Iceland and the North Atlantic island groups of Shetland, Orkney and the Faroes*. It comes to the conclusion that the Hanseatic Diets prohibited direct commercial links to Shetland, Orkney and the Faroes consistently from 1416, but turned a blind eye to the Iceland trade. The reasons for this inconsistent policy were the necessity of maintaining the Bergen’s monopoly on the stockfish trade (which was also in the interest of the Danish-Norwegian crown), while at the same time keeping the door open for Hanseatic merchants who were not active in the Bergen trade to forge commercial links with Iceland, albeit at their own risk. The representatives of the Hanseatic towns often preferred to leave an issue undecided, in order to keep as many options open as possible. The huge divergence in the interests of merchants and towns forced the Diet to dissemble, pursuing policies out of the public gaze which subverted the resolutions the Diet had passed for public consumption.
Highlights
This paper explores the limits of the Hanseatic Diet’s ability to regulate Hanseatic trade with Iceland and the North Atlantic island groups of Shetland, Orkney and the Faroes*
Turning to the other side of the Bergen trade, Hanseatic merchants were able to dominate the stockfish trade in Bergen in the fourteenth century due to the huge amounts of grain which they could offer for sale
It is difficult to understand, he continued, ‘why the Hanse prohibited trade with the Shetlands, Orkneys and Faroes so early in its history and why it held to this policy so doggedly, while it did not bother to flank the Danish prohibition of the Iceland trade with decrees of its own until comparatively late and instantly forgot about the matter altogether’.13. This statement is consonant with the sources, but cannot be squared with Friedland’s own assertion that ‘until the early 1520s the representatives of the Hanseatic towns attending the Diets, when speaking for public consumption, blandly denied that their co-citizens were engaging in trade with Iceland’ or employed diplomatic language to draw a veil over these activities
Summary
Direct contacts between Hanseatic merchants and Iceland and the North Atlantic island groups had deleterious effects on the income of the Norwegian crown from the Bergen staple and on the income of the Hanseatic Kontor there. Prohibiting alien merchants from frequenting the regions north of Bergen and the tributary islands (Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland and Orkney) had made Bergen the central staple. Both the king of Norway and the Hanseatic Diet had a vital interest in upholding Bergen’s staple function. Turning to the other side of the Bergen trade, Hanseatic merchants were able to dominate the stockfish trade in Bergen in the fourteenth century due to the huge amounts of grain which they could offer for sale.. A royal Norwegian staple, it was a Hanseatic staple as well
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