Fish Market and Vågen

Transcript

Finish beside Vågen, where fish remains commerce rather than merely heritage branding.

Stockfish is cod dried by cold air without salt, especially associated with northern Norway. Its durability made long-distance transport possible. European demand — including religious fasting practices — helped make dried fish one of medieval Norway’s major export commodities.

The Black Death reached Norway in 1349. A long-standing Bergen account describes an infected merchant ship arriving from England. University of Bergen materials preserve that tradition, while modern plague research cautions against treating the classic rat-and-flea narrative as a complete explanation for medieval outbreaks.

So the safe historical statement is that maritime connections that created Bergen’s prosperity also exposed it to disease.

Globalisation has always had a public-health department, even when nobody funded it.

Synthetic narration. Sources are linked below.

Sources

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Bryggen
• Museum Vest — The Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene
• University of Bergen — Medieval Bergen chronology and Black Death
• University of Bergen — Historical Bergen facts including 1349 plague arrival tradition