The Black Death 309 



in at Bergen. It had several persons on board. But 

 before they were able to unload the ship all these 

 people fell dead, one after another, on the landing-quay. 

 People did not like to see the cargo lying there useless, so 

 they set to work to carry it up to the town. They like- 

 wise died. Then the pest spread over the whole city. 

 It was the ' Black Death,' or, as the Norwegians call it, 

 the Mcend-dod, the ' Mens-death,' ' Tlu Death.' Men 

 began dying in thousands here in Bergen ; and presently 

 the death spread over all the country. It was said that 

 two-thirds of the population of Norway died from this 

 plague. This is no doubt an exaggeration. One-third 

 would be a fairer reckoning. But at this lower estimate 

 the history of the disease is strange and terrible enough. 

 It seems to be a fact that whole villages were depopu- 

 lated : that sometimes the sites of them were re-absorbed 

 into the primeval forest, and lost to memory. There 

 are even stories of the emergence of a sort of race of 

 wild men of the woods, the grown-up children from 

 places where the whole adult population had died, and 

 the inhabited country had been, as it were, restored to 

 the empire of Nature. 



The political events which affected Norway during 

 the fifteenth century arose from the rivalries of Sweden 

 and Denmark. The former of these two countries never 

 peaceably accepted the state of things sanctioned by 

 the Calmar Union. That meant that Sweden was to 

 be in effect governed from Copenhagen, from Den- 

 mark, and, therefore, in accordance with Danish ideas. 

 For Denmark was by far the most civilised of the three 

 Scandinavian kingdoms. It was, too, in much closer 



