UiS Open Journals (Univ. of Stavanger)
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The North Atlantic trade with Iceland, Shetland, Orkney and the Faroes and the policy of the Hanseatic Diet (1369–1535)
Get PDFThis 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
Shetland and her German merchants, c. 1450–1710
Get PDFFrom around 1450 to 1712 merchants from North German towns, especially Bremen and Hamburg, took ships to the Shetland Islands. They broke the rules of the Hanse with a view to buying fish from the Shetlanders, and gave them goods in exchange that they could not otherwise acquire. They played a vital part in Shetland’s economy, and their activities were regulated by local officials. From 1610, however, they received more and more attention from customs officers, who imposed heavy tolls and duties on them. Battered by those officials, and from the 1690s by privateers and the collapse of the Shetland economy, they hung on until the first decade of the new century. Disappearing, after 1707, they were replaced by enterprising Shetlanders as purchasers and exporters of the Shetlanders’ fish
Cultural colonialism as a result of commercial activities: the linguistic perspective
Get PDFThe Hanse played not only a prominent economical role in the North Atlantic but the Germans also consistently influenced the culture of the people with whom they interacted and traded. Their presence led to a sort of cultural colonialism in Northern Europe, which, among others things, substantially shaped the Scandinavian languages. For several reasons, the Icelandic language was not influenced in the same way as the other Scandinavian languages; yet, one can find some traces of German in administrative language dating back to the Middle Ages. Furthermore, ‘cultural colonization’ by the Germans also certainly took place through the Reformation in Iceland. It was the German merchants who took the first seeds of the new faith with them to Iceland and marked their ‘conquest’ by building a Lutheran church. In this way, the merchants – like colonialists – claimed a space on foreign ground for themselves, where language played a very central role. 
Pirates and merchants – Hanse traders and Victual Brothers in Skjernesund and other outports of southernmost Norway in the early fifteenth century
Get PDFFriend or foe? Trader or pirate? Commercial shipping along the archipelago of southern Norway in the early fifteenth century could be a risky business. Hanseatic skippers must have had detailed knowledge of sailing routes and good harbours along the route past Lindesnes towards Bergen. Among a chain of good natural harbours, Skjernesund near Mandal formed a hub, a protected inner route consisting of several good harbour areas sheltered from the exposed Skagerrak north of Skjernøya. An overview of dated shipwrecks along the coast of southern Norway is presented and their context discussed in relation to why they wrecked. It is striking that the majority of wrecks have been found in port areas. The most common interpretation of these wrecks individually is that there are natural explanations for these as losses at sea. By comparing the written sources and historical events from the main period of these shipwrecks, it is probable that in many cases the cause was piracy. 
Social work between empirical explorations, different contexts, voices and conceptual challenges
Get PDFWhat to do when the results are insufficient: lessons from the excavation of a cairn field at Eikebakken, Øvre Øksnevad, Klepp
Get PDFThe cairn field at Eikebakken, Øvre Øksnevad, Klepp municipality, Rogaland, Norway, was excavated over the course of 26 weeks in the summer of 2016. The site had undergone an initial survey in 2008, indicating a total of 79 cairns. However, when the site was uncovered a total of 103 stone built structures were identified, as well as three separate settlement areas and evidence of prehistoric farming. The initial project plan and budget were written with the idea of focusing on a smaller number of more thoroughly excavated (i.e. single-context) cairns. The increased number of structures made this plan untenable. As the excavation progressed it also became clear that the single-context method was not returning the amount of data required. The excavation thus went through several major shifts in strategy in response to, primarily, the archaeology and the need to develop a representative data set, but also time/budgetary constraints and available labor resources. The strategy ultimately settled upon involved a much more rapid excavation of a larger number of cairns with a focus on the use of environmental evidence from the cairns, particularly material suitable for radiocarbon dating, but also a range of other methodologies, as a means of understanding the development of the cairn field. This article will discuss both the methodologies and prioritizations involved in the excavation and will present some brief, initial results
Hverken grav eller rydning – rituelle røyser fra yngre bronsealder–førromersk jernalder på Sømme i Rogaland
Get PDFThis article discusses cairns as ritual constructions during the Late Bronze and Pre-Roman Iron Ages in Southwest Norway. The basis for the discussion are two cairns from Sømme in Sola, Rogaland. It is suggested that the cairns are part of rituals related to settlement expansion and a rapid transformation of the landscape during the period
Bremen’s trade with the North Atlantic, c. 1400–1700
Get PDFThere is little evidence of Bremen merchants in Norway before the royal charters issued from 1279 onwards, even though Bremen had been the seat of the missionary archbishop for the Nordic countries since the ninth century. Trade in Bergen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was dominated by the Hanseatic cities of the Baltic Sea coast led by merchants from Lübeck. Despite opposition from Hanseatic merchants sailing to Bergen, merchants from Hamburg and Bremen developed new trading posts to barter cod on Iceland and Shetland in the fifteenth century. Traders from Hamburg and Bremen on Iceland competed for licences issued by the Danish king. The 1558 debt register of a merchant from Bremen in Kumbaravogur provides considerable insight into this trade. The Danish king restricted sailings to Iceland to Danish merchants from 1601. On Shetland the Scottish foud allotted landing places to foreign skippers and traders. Merchants from Bremen became respected members of the island communities and in the seventeenth century they changed to trading in herring. Several tariff rate rises led to the end of Bremen sailings to Shetland by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Bremen merchants in Norway succeeded in breaking the Lübeck dominance in Bergen in the sixteenth century. By 1600, other Norwegian harbours in the North Atlantic, notably Stavanger, were also destinations for ships from Bremen
Aspects of Hanse archaeology in the Faroe Islands
Get PDFCompared to the neighbouring countries in the North Atlantic, very few sites in the Faroe Islands can be interpreted as trading sites ascribed to German merchants. This paper deals with physical evidence found around the islands that might attest to such activity. It is based on place-name evidence, local oral traditions, and, not least, archaeological remains, such as buildings and artefacts. A few sites are examined, and the presence of the Germans in the capital of Tórshavn is particularly discussed. Two of the most characteristic buildings at the peninsula of Tinganes, the Munkastovan and Leigubúðin, are reinterpreted. The site of Krambatangi on the island of Suðuroy is equally important for this discussion. Archaeological investigations took place there in 1952. The place-name as well as local tradition connected to the site suggest the presence of a merchants’ booth – a trading site – located by a very fine natural harbour. The site is located close to the local assembly site in the village of Øravík
When Prophecy Adapts: En undersøkelse av utviklingen til Våkttårnets eskatologiske forventninger
Get PDFJehovah’s Witnesses is often presented as a special religious group, one who has preached the imminence of the end of the world for an exceptional long amount of time. The implicit assumption in this statement, is also this article’s hypothesis: an imminent eschatological expectation will, over time, create an explanatory problem, where religions, for the sake of their own survival, must revise and adapt their eschatological expectations. This article examines this hypothesis by analysing the eschatological expectations presented in Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine The Watchtower, from 1985 through 2015. With the use of Roy Rappaports theory, supplemented with some new terms to make the theory fit the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it analyses the developments and adaptations in Jehovah’s Witnesses eschatological doctrines, and shows numerous signs of a religious organization that may be headed towards great changes in the immanent character of its eschatological beliefs