128 



SCANDINAYIA. 



Haugcsund guards the northern entrance of the Bukke-fiord over against 

 Stavanger. But the chief city of the seaboard between the Naze and Cape Stadt 

 is the ancient Bergen, formerly Bjorgviii, or " Highland. Fen," founded in the 

 second half of the eleventh century in the midst of a labyrinth of islands, inlets, 

 and peninsulas of all sizes, and encircled by seven mountains, besides numerous 

 smaller crests. The native place of the poet Holberg and the naturalist Michael 

 Sars, it was long the most populous city in Norway, and is still by far the largest, 

 the capital alone excepted. Here the Hanseatic traders formerly possessed a town 

 within a town, consisting of granaries and warehouses raised on piles, connected 

 with the mainland by pontoons, and defended by a garrison of 3,000 valiant 



Fig. 64.^Tn()NT1HJKM. 

 Scale 1 : 200,000. 



2 Miles. 



clerks and retainers. In 1763 was sold the last house belonging: to this German 

 colony ; but a large number of family names still recall the famous traders who 

 had almost monopolized the traffic of Bergen in the fifteenth century, and whose 

 architectural taste has imparted to the place an aspect different from that of all 

 other Norwegian towns. A still older monopoly granted to the local traders had 

 been the cause of the final rapture of all communication between Scandinavia and 

 the American continent. The development brought about by spontaneous impulse 

 and free trade was not maintained by royal charters. The right of visiting the 

 Greenland shores was restricted to Bergen skippers exclusively ; but when these 

 were massacred by their Hanseatic rivals in 1484, the secret of the highway to the 

 American waters was lost to Norway. 



