NINTH LETTER
Bergen, a Hanseatic city; an interesting museum; “Little Sir Alf”; the greatest military genius Norway ever had; the struggle between “Birchlegs” and “Baglers”; further historical connections of Bergen; Haakon Haakonsson.
Bergen, May 1.
My dear Judicia,
I am comfortably situated in Hotel Norge, on Ole-Bulls-Plads. Directly beneath my window stands Ole Bull himself, continually though silently playing his violin, through rain and hail and snow and vapor and stormy wind. Bergen is a thoroughly old-world city. To be sure, it has a modern section, but the whole flavor of the place is ancient. Like all other towns in Norway, it has suffered time after time from fire, but, strangely enough, it has been built up on the old lines. Another thing that lends a flavor of antiquity is the fact that it is surrounded (supposedly) by seven hills, like the seven hills of Rome, though it is an unfortunate geographical fact that there are not seven but four in the case of Bergen. Of course there are countless little unevennesses in the ground, some of which might even be called hillocks. With more romance than accuracy the citizens have selected three of these mounds, added them to their four real hills, and put seven on their armorial bearings.
There is a wide street, which assumes the proportions and name of a square, which separates the old town from the new and also serves in the capacity of fire road. When we cross this square, which bears the name of Torv-Almenning, we are in fairyland—a dirty, medieval, Hanseatic fairyland. The streets are very narrow, and the white timber houses with their red-tiled roofs certainly lay claim, along with the Lofoten Islands and the Damascus rag fair and the Nile dahabiyeh, to the right of being called picturesque. The vaagen, or harbor, is inclosed on all sides by ancient warehouses, suggesting fish. At the end of the harbor is a market, where fish are sold with considerable bargaining.
A great part of Norway’s fish trade passes through Bergen, though the principal reason for this seems to lie in the fact that it always has been so. Formerly it was compulsory. The German merchants settled in Bergen and succeeded in gaining an absolute monopoly on the trade, which they maintained for nearly three centuries. At one end of the market lies the Hanseatic House, now made into a museum. It is the only genuine house of its kind now in existence, anywhere, and gives a good idea of the manner in which these selfish old merchants conducted their business. Here we find the merchant’s office and his manager’s bureau, the clerk’s apartments, and even the common bedroom. An old ledger is exhibited, which, as Goodman says, “contains, no doubt, the record of many a fraudulent transaction.” The whole house, inside and out, is profusely ornamented and painted in lurid colors, which make not the slightest pretense of harmonizing. All sorts of articles are exhibited, which formerly made up the merchant’s office and household property, “such as their scales and weights, the latter [here a little sidelight on Hanseatic methods] being of two sorts, for buying and selling; their cloaks, lanterns, candlesticks, fire engines, snuff boxes, washing bowls, drinking cups and tankards, machines for chopping cabbage, and staves with bags for making collections in church.”
The arms of the leaguers were half an eagle and half a codfish, or a cornucopia with a cod supplanting the usual fruit or flowers.
The merchants trusted each other no more than they trusted outsiders, and their strong-box is fitted with three locks, the keys to which were possessed by three different members of the league.
These “crooks” were very modest about some things. Their bedrooms were arranged in a peculiar way, with the beds along the side of the wall, each bed opening out through a sort of lattice work to a main corridor. This was to enable the female domestic to make the gentleman’s bed without having to enter his room.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Bergen, Northeast from Laksevaag.
The German merchants of the league grew more insolent as they grew more powerful, and they used to swagger around the quays, beating and bullying the native Norwegians who chanced to be in their way. It is with peculiar delight that I read of a trick played on them by the notorious pirate, the Norwegian Baron Alf Erlingsson, called “Little Sir Alf.” He was as bold in spirit as he was diminutive in stature, and he became a constant terror to the Hanseatic merchants, because of the depredations he committed upon them. They tried by every means in their power to get him into their hands, but he always outwitted them. As Boyesen says: “It was of no use that the league sent out ships of war to capture him; he outmaneuvered them, deceived them, sent them on a wild-goose chase, and ended by capturing his would-be captors.”
As a final, crowning insult, he one day appeared incognito in an open boat and bargained with them about the price set upon his head. It is a sad fact that later the little pirate’s luck deserted him. He was captured and brought before Queen Agnes of Denmark. On his arrival before this lady, she twitted him mercilessly about his size. He blazed out in return that she would never live to see the day when she could bear such a son, at which the queen furiously ordered him to be put to death by way of the rack and wheel.
There is an old cathedral here, which the Bergeners proudly point out as the home of the Reformation when it first reached Norway. Perhaps you might not think this anything to be very proud of, in view of what I told you in one of my other letters about the introduction of the Reformation from Denmark. But Bergen does have a right to be proud, for it was here that Bishop Gjeble Pedersson lived and finally succeeded in educating a good, native Norwegian clergy, which gradually supplanted the abominable class Denmark sent.
Denmark’s treatment of Norway in matters of religion was only a sample of her treatment of Norway in all matters. King Christian I wished to arrange a marriage between James III of Scotland and his daughter Margaret, but, as he did not happen to have sufficient money in his exchequer to supply the customary dowry, he promptly pawned the Orkneys for fifty thousand gulden, and the Shetland Isles for an additional sum. Thus poor, downtrodden Norway lost her island possessions, which she had colonized and held for ages. It was a cruel blow, and the land mourned as for the loss of her own children.
To the northwest of Bergen is an interesting tower called Sverresborg, named for Sverre Sigurdsson, the most romantic figure in all Norwegian history, and certainly the country’s greatest king, from the point of view of pure genius. For thirty years, at the end of the twelfth century, the history of Norway is the history of Sverre. Bergen is more closely associated with him than any other town in Norway, for it was here that the “Birchlegs” and the “Baglers,” with whom he was so closely identified, fought for a whole summer.
Sverre was born in the Faroe Isles at a time when Norway was absorbed, as usual, in a red-hot dispute over the succession to the throne. Sverre’s father had been King Sigurd Mouth, and his mother, whose name was Gunhild, had been cook in the king’s service, if the saga is true. At any rate, she was a very sharp-witted woman, and kept his royal parentage secret from every one, even from the boy himself. Magnus Erligsson occupied the throne of Norway and made every effort to exterminate the race of Sigurd Mouth. He heard that there was an illegitimate son of old Sigurd in the Faroes, and he sent a spy named Unas to kill the child. Gunhild cleverly averted this danger by inducing Unas to marry her and become the child’s stepfather. She was in the service of Bishop Matthias as a milkmaid, and she brought up her son with the idea that he should become a priest.
It so happened that when Sverre was a young man there was in Norway a pretender named Eystein Little-Girl. He certainly did not earn his nickname through his shyness in pushing his claims. He organized a small rebel band of brave outlaws and robbers, who succeeded in having him proclaimed king. Soon after, however, Eystein Little-Girl was killed, and his miserable band of supporters, who had come to be called “Birchlegs,” because of their dilapidated appearance and their birch-bark shoes, seemed destined to pass out of existence. They sought a new leader, and at this point Sverre appeared on the scene. They invited him to become their leader, and he accepted.
With this ragged little band of outlaws, numbering less than a hundred, Sverre set out to gain the throne of Norway, and in the end he succeeded. For long he roamed about, like Robin Hood with his merry men. He would “drop in” on a country festival and scare the people so that they fled, whereupon he and his merry men would sit down to a comfortable banquet.
However, this was more by way of a practical joke, enforced by hunger, than by any real cruelty, for Sverre was by nature extremely merciful. On one occasion, when he and his Birchlegs were crossing a mountain lake on rafts, he himself started out on the last one, but when he was some distance from shore a poor comrade, who was nearly dead and was being left behind, called piteously to be taken along. Although every raft was crowded to its utmost capacity, Sverre went back and got the dying man. The raft was so overloaded that he now had to stand up to his knees in icy water, but he did finally reach the other shore. It is reported that when Sverre’s foot left the raft (he was the last man to disembark), it sank out of sight. His followers regarded this as a miracle, and it filled them with hope.
Amid incredible hardships he fought his way to the throne, and he became so formidable that nurses throughout all Norway used to scare bad boys by saying that Sverre would catch them if they didn’t watch out.
In 1195 the Byzantine Emperor Alexius had a quarrel on his hands and sent an ambassador, Reidar, to collect from Norway two hundred mercenaries. Reidar collected his force and was prepared to return, when Bishop Nicholas, who hated Sverre with almost insane malignity, persuaded him to turn his attention to the task of wiping out the powerful Birchlegs. Accordingly these two hundred mercenaries were formed into the famous band called “Baglers” (crookmen, from bagall, a bishop’s crook or staff). The historic war between the Baglers and the Birchlegs centered around Bergen.
I climbed Flöifjeldet the other day, one of Bergen’s four real hills, and as I looked down on the city I could seem to see the whole struggle between Birchlegs and Baglers. But that was not the only famous struggle which took place in Bergen, and Sverre’s is not the only great name closely associated with it. Here, in Christ Church, Haakon Haakonsson was crowned on St. Olaf’s Day, July 29, 1247. On this occasion a continuous banquet was held for three days, for which function a huge boathouse was “commandeered,” as the palace was not large enough for the guests. It was the most splendid feast that had ever been held in Norway, and after the banquet a five-day fête was held in honor of the cardinal. At this fête Ordeals were forever abolished, on the very excellent ground that “it was not seemly for Christian men to challenge God to give his verdict in human affairs.”
Another reform was introduced, excluding from the royal succession all illegitimate sons—in the future. In putting forward this reform, Haakon Haakonsson must have made an effort to forget that he himself was an illegitimate son of King Haakon Sverresson.
His father, who was a son of the great Sverre, as his name indicates, had been foully murdered by his stepmother, the dowager queen Margaret. This dowager queen had stolen away Christina, Sverresson’s half-sister. As Sverresson was her legal protector, he tried in every way to get her back. Argument and pleading proving vain, he resorted to stratagem. He sent his cousin, Peter Steyper, who “burst into the princess’ room while her mother was taking a bath, crying at the top of his voice that the Baglers had come to town.” Christina was terrified, but Steyper told her not to fear, as he would save her. He took her in his arms and fled to the wharves, where he hustled her aboard his ship. The dowager queen soon discovered the trick and dashed down to the water’s edge in the most scandalous décolleté. She reached it just as the ship pulled off and for a long time vainly screamed curses after it. However, she took a glorious revenge by inviting her stepson to a banquet of peace and there poisoning him.
Interesting as is the history of Norway, it is to say the least “strenuous,” and it is rather a relief if you have been on Flöifjeldet, dreaming of Sverre and Haakonsson, to come down into Bergen’s quiet, old-fashioned market, where there are no Birchlegs and no Baglers now. The name “Bergen,” or Björgvin, means “pasture on the mountains,” and seems to suggest a restfulness with which history has not always favored the city. Many of the fisherwomen, or fiskerpiger, in the market place are gayly dressed in some of the varied forms of the national costume. However, I understand that the costumes are so much gayer and more conspicuous in the Hardanger and Sætersdal regions that I think I will wait until I get there before I tell you about them. I have not yet seen any of the well-known fjords, though I doubt if there is anything much finer in that line than the Ofotenfjord at Narvik.
I do not know when or from where I shall write to you again, but it will be from somewhere among the fjords, as no one could really feel the full spell of Norway, I suppose, without exploring the famous Hardanger and Sogne and some of the others. Another place which I want surely to see before I leave Norway is the famous Sætersdal in the south. It is here I understand that one may find the past par excellence—not history, for Sætersdal is not a particularly historic region, but the customs and manners and dress and general characteristics of the Norwegians of a few centuries back.
It may be some time before I shall write again, as there is much to see and much to explore. In the mean-time please prepare yourself to chalk up many points for Norway, for its fjords and its dals, as you know, are among its chief claims to distinction.
Yours as ever,
Aylmer.