Abstract
The Hanseatic Kontor in Bergen was one of the main hubs of trade in the North Sea region. This paper explores a possibility suggested in a late sixteenth-century manuscript that the Norwegian Kontor for some time was also located at Notau, a place south of Bergen. It is argued that this written source might refer to the years 1427–33 when the Hanseatic merchants withdrew from Bergen because of an on-going war between King Erik and northern German princes. Notau is mentioned several times in sources from the fifteenth century and most of these references are related to Hanseatic activity. However, viewed in a broader context, Notau stands out as an important harbour on the south-western Norwegian coast, visited both by Norwegians and Hanseatics, as well as travellers from other regions.
Highlights
The Hanseatic Kontor in Bergen was one of the main hubs of trade in the North Sea region
The question to be asked, with the 1425 letter in mind, is whether Notau was such a place where trade was legal according to older regulations, or if the intention was to curb such activity here and elsewhere within the province of the bishop of Stavanger? In the truce made between King Erik and the counts of Holstein and Hamburg, Lübeck, Wismar and Lüneburg, it is stated that within Norway the Hanseatic merchants should be allowed to trade in Bergen and Stavanger according to their old privileges
If my reasoning in the above has any bearing, the remark about Notau in the late sixteenth-century manuscript ‘Die Nortsche Saw’ about the Kontor refers to the situation during the conflict with the Hanseatic towns and King Erik in the 1420s and early 1430s
Summary
This paper explores a possibility suggested in a late sixteenth-century manuscript that the Norwegian Kontor for some time was located at Notau, a place south of Bergen. Notau as a place of interest in the late medieval trade from western Norway is confirmed by several written sources and the location is found on older maps of the coastline.2 It is mentioned five times in Bruns’ edition of sources related to the Kontor in Bergen and the Bergenfahrer society in Lübeck.. The main purpose of this article is to attempt to make sense of the claim from the late sixteenth-century author that the Kontor in Norway for some time was located at Notau, and to what extent it was a harbour dominated by Hanseatic activity. ‘Die Nortsche Saw’ was not printed until the Norwegian antiquarian, Nicolay Nicolaysen published
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