Bergen

Behind the wharves the German merchants lived apart in their own quarter, spoke Low German, and alone could buy the stockfish that the northern fishermen sailed in each summer. Their wealth made Bergen one of the largest cities in Scandinavia, and also a target. The Black Death entered Norway in 1349 aboard an English ship that put in here, the Victual Brothers burned the royal castle and much of the town in 1429, and fire, the old enemy of a wooden city, struck again and again, worst in 1702, when nine tenths of Bergen burned. From about 1600 the Hanseatic grip slowly loosened as Norwegian merchants, many of Hanseatic descent, took over the trade, and in the 1750s the Kontor closed for good. Bergen kept its monopoly on the trade of northern Norway until 1789, and was still the largest city in the kingdom into the 1830s.