Cross and Scepter (19 page)

The king and the Church not only increased their incomes during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, they received them in a different form. In the early Middle Ages, the king and the bishop most often had to be present in person to receive their incomes, which took the form of provisions supplied during their visits in a particular district. The
leding
and the tithe were to some extent exceptions, but they were not, strictly speaking, income that belonged to these leaders. The
leding
consisted of provisions for ships manned by the local communities themselves, and the tithe mainly went to the local church and its priest. It either was divided into three shares, for the parish church, the priest, and the bishop (in Denmark and Sweden); or into four, the same three plus the poor (in Norway). We do not know how the bishop received his part in the early period, but it would seem likely that he did so during a visitation. According to canon law, a bishop was obliged to visit all parts of his diocese every year. Although this was not put into practice in a literal sense, there is evidence of episcopal visitations throughout the Middle Ages. However, the bishop eventually became entitled to the provisions whether he visited the district or not. In a similar way, the provisions for a king's visits, as well as the
leding
, were converted into a permanent tax that was brought to some central place where it was made available to the king or his representative.

Towns and Trade

In the late ninth century, the Norwegian chieftain Ottar traveled from northern Norway to King Alfred's court in England. His report on the journey was written down in the introduction to the Old English translation of Orosius' world history, which is still preserved. Ottar tells that he lived the farthest north of all the Norwegians, probably near what is now Malangen in Troms,
at nearly 70 degrees north. Although he owned only twenty cows, twenty sheep, and twenty pigs, he was a very rich man by local standards because he also owned six hundred reindeer. In addition, he received tribute from the Sami: hides, feathers, the bones of walruses, and the furs of reindeer, bears, otters, and martens. This tribute (
finnferd
) is later mentioned in the sagas as a royal privilege and one of the most lucrative favors that the king granted to his friends. As we have seen (p. 25), the export of such merchandise from northern Scandinavia to Western Europe was already on-going at this time and probably began even earlier. Ottar's case is thus one of many examples of Scandinavian active trade in the period, in addition to the Viking expeditions.

More than five hundred years later, in the winter 1432, a Venetian ship was shipwrecked off Røst, the outermost inhabited island of the Lofoten archipelago. The survivors managed to reach an uninhabited island and were found by the local population and brought to Røst, where they spent several months before they could resume their journey back to Venice in the summer. The captain, Pietro Querini, and some of the other Venetians wrote accounts of their experience that provide a detailed description of the life of the local population. The people of Røst lived, it would seem, in a kind of primitive innocence. They did not lock their doors, men and women bathed naked together without any immorality, they had sufficient food and material goods and were healthy and happy. Moreover, the Venetians discovered to their surprise that these people, living at the ends of the earth, wore clothes woven in London and belonged to a great international trade network. Lofoten had—and still has—one of the richest fisheries of the world. The people of Røst and the other Lofoten islands caught the cod that arrived in great numbers in the shallow waters offshore to breed at the beginning of each year. They cut up and dried the fish without salt in the cold and dry weather that was normal at this time of year and then brought it to Bergen
in summer, where they sold it to German merchants. In return, they bought home grain, cloth, and other merchandise.

These two examples point to major changes in the character and importance of Scandinavian trade during the half millennium that separates them. In the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, the Scandinavians mainly exported luxury goods on their own ships. While this trade still continued, its importance was now surpassed by the export of surplus from fisheries and agriculture, which to an increasing extent was bought by German merchants and transported by them. Population growth and the expansion of cultivated land increased agricultural production. Most of Scandinavia was well suited to animal husbandry, and products like butter, hides, and fish were important export articles, especially when population growth in other European countries and the greater wealth of the aristocracy led to greater demand for food. As the landowning aristocracy in Scandinavia appropriated more of the surplus of agriculture, a proportionally greater share of these products was brought to the market in return for products like grain, flour, cloth, wine and beer, and this led to the growth of towns.

German merchants had turned up in Norway already in the twelfth century. In 1186, King Sverre spoke out against them in Bergen, complaining that they imported wine that made people drunk instead of useful commodities like wheat, honey, and cloth, as did the English merchants. From the detailed description of the traveling merchant in
The King's Mirror,
we know that Norwegian merchants must still have traveled abroad in the mid-thirteenth century. They are also listed in the English customs rolls from the early fourteenth century and may have continued their visits well after that, although by then, the Germans had taken over most of the export. There have been various explanations of why this happened. At one time, the prevailing view was that better ships were responsible. Viking ships were excellent for
sailing, but they could carry very little cargo compared to the bigger and heavier German cogs. It turns out, however, that the Norwegians actually did use cogs. A better explanation therefore points to organization and the existing trade network. The Germans were ideally placed for transmitting trade goods between the East and West. They had an established system for doing this and also for suppressing competitors and keeping the trade for themselves. From the late thirteenth century on, they settled in Norwegian towns, notably Bergen, where they organized as a separate community with their own laws and jurisdiction.

The description of the merchant in
The King's Mirror
also suggests an explanation of why the Germans succeeded in Scandinavia. Aristocratic merchants like the one in this text, who mostly exported the surplus of their own lands, might occasionally want to travel abroad, bringing their own merchandise to markets in order to see the world and meet other people. However, they had no economic incentive to do so, if the buyers were willing to pick up the goods themselves and bring back what the sellers wanted in return. As long as the main export articles were the surplus from agriculture and the fisheries in the form of land rent, both producers and foreign buyers had a common interest in avoiding the unnecessary mediation of indigenous professional merchants. The land rent was mostly paid in kind—in grain, butter, and fish, the latter notably in the northern and western parts of Norway, so the great landowners received a considerable surplus. The archbishop, for example, was the greatest fish exporter in the country. In addition to his permanent residence in Nidaros, he had a great palace in Bergen, partly because Bergen was the most important royal residence, but also because of the fish trade. For this reason, the archbishop also had a more positive attitude toward the Germans than many of the other lay and clerical magnates. Peasants and fishermen had a similar attitude to German merchants. The fishermen brought their stockfish the long distance from northern
Norway to Bergen, but they were unable to transport them further as the voyage to Bergen and back took the entire summer. They too established permanent relationships to individual merchants, which probably meant that they got lower prices, but had the advantage that they could get credit in bad seasons and thus secure the goods they needed even if they could not pay for them at once.

A similar pattern existed in other parts of Scandinavia: Scania in Denmark (now southern Sweden) had extremely rich herring fisheries, and during the thirteenth century the great fair held there became a crossroads for trade between Scandinavia, Germany, and Western Europe. The markets in Scania are mentioned in the sources from around 1170 onwards. In the early thirteenth century, the chronicler Arnold of Lübeck pointed to the wealth that the trade in fish brought to the Danes and mentioned its importance for his own hometown. King Valdemar II (1202–41) issued a law for the port of Skanør, regulating the fishing and trade at this port and the custom due from the exporters. At this time, there were royal castles and some smaller towns in the surrounding area. Foreign merchants had their own plots, where they were allowed to salt their herring and conduct their trade and where they had internal jurisdiction. Merchants from a large number of towns, from the Baltic as well as the North Sea area, came to the market in Scania, which thus became a meetingplace between East and West, where a wide range of goods were sold or exchanged for herring. Scania thus became a market not only for herring but also for wine, beer, furs, hemp, salt, meat and various other commodities. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the value of Lübeck's trade in Scania was six times that of the city's trade in Bergen. In 1399, 1,218 of 1,760 ships that left Lübeck were bound for Scania, and the value of the trade in this and the following year amounted to one half of the town's total exports and imports.

Sweden's main export article was iron. Iron is one of the most common metals on earth and can be found in a variety of landscapes. However, some of the inner parts of Sweden, Dalarna and the surrounding areas, had the advantage of high-quality iron, readily accessible near the surface of mountains. This resource was increasingly exploited from the late twelfth century onwards, and played a prominent part in the Swedish economy after around 1300. Mining in Sweden was organized and largely controlled by freeholders or members of the lower nobility who jointly owned the mines and worked in teams to extract the ore (Swedish
bergsmän
= mountain men/miners). The smelting took place in privately owned works at the farms of individual miners. Iron mining was very labor-intensive, requiring large numbers of hired laborers; around 20,000 people, men and women, are supposed to have worked in the industry, which may amount to around 3 percent of the total population. In addition, mining created a considerable market for food. Grain was imported from the rich agricultural areas around the Lake Mälaren, and oxen were driven distances of 300 to 400 kilometers from the southern provinces. The existence of a wealthy class of commoners with easy access to arms also had major political consequences: the iron-producing areas formed the core of the popular movement against the union king in the fifteenth century (see
Chapter 5
).

Iron was transported from the inland mines to the coast and exported to other countries, mostly by German merchants who dominated trade in several Swedish towns, most notably Stockholm and Kalmar, where they may have numbered around one third of the total number of burghers. In contrast to Norway, the Germans in Sweden did not form a separate community, but became burghers with equal rights and the same duties as their Swedish counterparts.

The relationship between the Germans and the Scandinavian kingdoms was somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, the Germans
filled an obvious need for the great landowners, enabling them to sell their products and get others in return, and were also a source of money and credit. On the other hand, their trading conditions and the conditions for their settlement in the Scandinavian cities were a constant source of conflict, and the wealth of the merchants and cities was a temptation, particularly for the Danish king. The events during the last years of Erik Menved's reign and after his death in 1319 showed their financial strength and gave indications of the further expansion that followed. In 1367–1370, they defeated King Valdemar IV in war, and they played a major part during the period of Scandinavian unions. Their main aim was to protect their trading interests, which often led them to interfere in Scandinavian politics, particularly against Denmark, the strongest power in the region.

The growth in trade increased town populations and led to the foundation of new towns. In addition, bishops were normally supposed to reside in towns, and a bishop had a sufficiently large entourage and the wealth needed to support at least a small town with a cathedral, an episcopal palace, and houses for canons and for the meetings of the cathedral chapter. Kings and their courts also increasingly took up residence in towns, normally moving between a number of them, another factor contributing to urbanization. In addition, most towns served as area markets, where peasants and local lords could exchange commodities. But of the around 140 Scandinavian towns founded before the early fourteenth century—fifteen in Norway, twenty-five in Sweden, and the rest in Denmark—only three were significant centers for long-distance trade: Bergen, Stockholm, and Visby, each probably with around 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants.

The two largest towns in Scandinavia from the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth century onwards were Bergen in Norway and Stockholm in Sweden, both centers for the export of, respectively, fish and iron, transported by German merchants, who formed a large part of the towns' populations. Visby was also important from this point of view, although it declined from the thirteenth century onwards because of competition from German towns. By contrast, there was no similar town in Denmark, despite the importance of the Scania market. The reason for this was most probably the short distance between North Germany and the Danish markets. German merchants could easily buy the herring where it was caught and either return to their hometowns or export it to Western Europe during the same summer, whereas they needed to spend the winter in Bergen if they were to do the same with fish from northern Norway. Consequently, despite their greater economic importance, the fisheries in Scania did not give rise to extensive urbanization; the trade was carried on in various market-places along the shore. This changed after 1400, when the markets in Scania declined, while the towns, notably Malmö, became more important. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, it was the fourth largest town in Scandinavia, after Bergen, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, with around 4,500 inhabitants. It also played a major part during the Reformation and the Count's War (p. 284–85). The growth of Copenhagen took place after 1417, when the king took it over from the bishop of Roskilde and made it his capital.