THE story of Harald’s ship is confirmed by a speech made by King Sverre in 1186 at Bergen,* to this effect:
“We thank willingly all English men, who have hither brought wheat-flour, and honey, meal and clothes. So willingly we thank all those men who hither have brought linen or flax, wax or kettles.”*
He goes on to say, that he wishes all German traders would leave Bergen unvisited, and not bring their stores of butter and stockfish, for they introduced drunkenness, and all the five evils that come from it.* This English trade went on till the middle of the fifteenth century, when the Hanse merchants obtained a monopoly of trade, the evil effects of which are still apparent.*
abridged
* Sverre Sigurdsson, King of Norway from 1177 to 1202. His contemporaries in England were Henry II (1154-1189), Richard I (1189-1199) and John (1199-1216).
* In Sverri’s Saga §104 (the Saga was begun in 1185 under the King’s personal direction) the words of Sverre were: “We desire to thank the Englishmen who have come here, bringing wheat and honey, flour and cloth. We desire to thank those who have brought here linen or flax, wax or caldrons. We desire next to make mention of those who have come from the Orkney, Shetland, The Færys [Faroes] or Iceland; all those who have brought here such things as make this land the richer, and we cannot do without. But there are Germans who have come here in great numbers, with large ships intending to carry away butter and dried fish, of which the exportation much impoverishes the land; and they bring wine instead, which people strive to purchase, both my men, townsmen, and merchants.”
* The King enumerated the ‘five evils of excessive drinking’ thus: a loss of income and savings; the impact on memory and cognitive ability; a tendency to desperate violence; unreasonable anger at slight offences; and lastly exhaustion, leading to a breakdown of health.
* The Hanseatic League was a confederation of merchant guilds and market towns clustered around the shores of the Baltic Sea, from northern Germany east to Russia. See An Odious Monopoly. As recently as 1803, Sydney Smith (1771-1845) could write (after another excoriating attack on the slave trade) that “Denmark, after having been long overshadowed by the active industry of the Hanseatic towns, has at length established important commercial connections with all the nations of Europe, and has regulated those connections by very liberal and enlightened principles.”