3o6 Norway and the Norivegians 



reaped greater commercial advantages than have since 

 fallen in her way. For in the full flower of the Middle 

 Ages, when the fasts of the church were rigidly observed, 

 fisheries, such as the northern cod-fisheries, were of the 

 greatest value in the economy of Europe. There was 

 no article of commerce from countries with a seaboard 

 to inland ones for which there was a more constant 

 demand than fish. Undoubtedly the northern fisheries 

 developed largely under the stimulus of this demand. 

 If at the same time a special merchant class had grown 

 up to stand as middlemen between the getter and the 

 consumer of this necessary article of diet, Norway might 

 have attained a high degree of commercial prosperity. 



But what was not supplied from within the country 

 was supplied more or less forcibly from without. The 

 Hansa, or ' The League,' which had been hatched by 

 terror of the northern pirates, was now grown great 

 enough in its turn to be a terror to the Scandinavian 

 nations. 



The town of Wisby, in Gothland, bears traces of the 

 great prosperity which it attained when it was the chief 

 Scandinavian city of this famous Hansa. There are 

 in that one city more Gothic churches of stone than 

 are to be found in all Norway. All along the southern 

 shore of the Baltic we come upon towns, strong- walled 

 towns as they were in the Middle Ages, with their walls 

 still standing, which were members of this mighty 

 League : Dantzig, for instance, which still contains the 

 immense warehouses which were built in the Middle 

 Ages. Stolpe is another of these towns which to-day 

 is half forgotten ; but its old walls remain. Then we 

 come to a group of the Western Baltic cities, Stralsund, 



