Plague epidemics in Norway

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Theodor Kittelsen , 1900: Pesta i trappen (The plague on the steps)

The plague epidemics in Norway have profoundly influenced the political map of Scandinavia . Similar to the outbreak of the plague in other parts of Europe in the mid-14th century, this pandemic had far-reaching effects on the country's society and economy. The first plague epidemic of 1348 is called svartedauden ( Black Death ) in Norway . The epidemics ultimately led to the loss of Norway's statehood for a long time and thus to the loss of its Norrønt language . The history of the plague in Norway is well researched. Together with the more recent research results in connection with the plague during the Vietnam War , a good picture emerges of the conditions and social contexts of the spread of the plague in the various centuries of the late Middle Ages and early modern times .

The great plague of 1348/1349

How the plague came to Europe is described in the article Black Death . In May 1348 she came to Weymouth on the English Channel coast by sea ( lit .: Higden). There the plague spread quickly over the east coast and was soon in London .

St. Sebastian prays for the plague victims

The following illustration is essentially based on the book “Svartedauen” by the plague researcher Ole Jørgern Benedictow. Using the sources, he developed a kind of itinerary of the spread of the plague. The objection to his results, however, is that they are based on conditions that are not always viable. For example, it is assumed that it is the same plague that was researched in the 20th century. This hypothesis is then proven by the selection, interpretation and compilation of the sources that already assume the correctness of the hypothesis. The fact that his preconceived notions even negate the findings is also evident from his thesis that only rats could be considered for transmission and, because the plague was established, there must have actually been more rats in Norway than has actually been found so far. Nevertheless, in the following it is largely followed because the historical processes he describes are hardly affected by it, and opposing positions are cited from case to case.

According to Benedictow, the plague reached Hamar in 1349 . He concludes this from the death of Bishop Hallvard in Hamar in 1349. However, it is neither certain that Hallvard really died in 1349, nor is it certain that he died of an epidemic. The year 1350 is mentioned in the bishop's chronicle of Hamar, but it was “corrected” in 1349 by the editors. By recalculating the known speed of the plague, Benedictow comes to the conclusion that the plague came to Oslo as early as autumn 1348 . Because what had never happened before and never happened later: In February 1349, the city council donated an altar to the plague saint St. Sebastian by paying a considerable sum to the canons of the Oslo bishop's church. However, this derivation is considered to be too thin and the outbreak of the plague in Oslo was denied earlier than in Bergen. All annals agree that the plague came to Bergen from England in 1349.

According to Benedictow, the plague spread from Oslo to Kongehelle (near Gothenburg ) in autumn 1348 and in the rest of the south-east in May 1349, as evidenced by an edict by King Magnus in early September 1349, in which the spread of the epidemic in “whole” Norway ”is used as a reason for encouraging the population to fast and pray for prevention. On the other hand, since Magnus II was also King of Norway and his Norwegian administration was based in Oslo, it is considered unlikely that he was not induced to take this step until autumn 1349, when the plague had already arrived in Oslo in 1348. For the Swedish hinterland further to the east, the plague is not documented until 1350. This can be attributed to a lower exchange of goods, in particular a low transport of grain from Norway. The plague moved from Hamar through Gudbrandsdalen to Nidaros and broke out there in autumn 1349. In the Icelandic Lögmanns-annáll it is reported for 1349 that a cog sailed from England to Bergen and brought the plague there. The description of the disease leaves no doubt that it was bubonic and pulmonary plague. In all likelihood, a load of grain from Lynn was the means of transport. On May 8, 1349 Edward III. a privilege issued to two merchants in Lynn to ship 1,000 quarters (= 12,700 kg) of grain to Norway. The consequence of the plague in Bergen was that the clergy were carried away, so that pastoral care for the dying was no longer guaranteed. The clergy were particularly affected because they came into direct contact with the sick through the administration of the sacraments . At the request of the archbishop , Pope Clement VI. the permission, in deviation from canon law , to ordain 10 men born out of wedlock and 10 men between the ages of 20 and 25 (i.e. younger than otherwise permitted). According to the Icelandic Lögmanns-annál , Bishop Hallvard von Hamar died of the plague in 1349 , and immediately after his successor was consecrated in Nidaros, the local Archbishop Arne Vade Einarsson († October 17, 1349) died of the plague in the same year .

St. Christopher and St. Roch on an altarpiece in the Hjørundfjord Church in Sunnmøre.

The dates of the bishops' deaths cannot be determined with certainty from the sources, however, as the times are not always reliable. The same applies to the Hamar episcopal chronicle.

The chronicle was written between 1542 and 1553 and is available in a copy from the 17th century. After the Lögmanns-annál , a canon named Lodin remained in Nidaros. He elected (probably with some new canons) the new Archbishop Olav (1350-1370). How far the plague spread to the north cannot be determined. The sources are silent. All that is known is that a short time later a very reduced population is reported. But this can also be due to the fact that many farms further south had become ownerless and many people moved from the north to the south. The last known to have died in the first wave of the plague was Bishop of Stavanger Guttorm Pålsson on January 7, 1350.

For the first half of the 14th century it is estimated that there were around 64,000 farms in the area of ​​present-day Norway, together with the Bohuslän and southwestern Sweden lost to the areas of Bohuslän and south-west Sweden, there were probably around 73,000 farms. Serious estimates assume an average of 4.5 people per farm. That meant an approximate population of 330,000 people before the plague. About 70% of them lived in south-east Norway north of Bohuslän. Comparative studies on the number of victims in the rest of Europe show a death rate of 60%. Not all of them died of the plague, but also starved to death due to the collapse of all supplies. That adds up to about 210,000 deaths. If you take the figure of 62.5% recorded for England, you get 220,000 deaths. Of the sick, only 20% survived the plague.

Social consequences

The extensive depopulation raises the question of why the plague was able to spread so quickly in Norway with its rural settlement. This is due to the close relationships between the farms. The entire peasant society was pervaded by a network of visits and return visits and all kinds of gatherings and was thereby held together. Because the epidemic is not transmitted from person to person, but rather by fleas, the dead were still sources of infection. And the Christian duty of the funeral with its rituals led to a gathering of many people in the house of the deceased, where everyone then took the infected fleas with him to his farm. The pastor of Rollag in Viken testified that he was there when Ànund Helgeson died on Christmas Day. When he died, Ragnhild Simonsdotter, Alvild Sveinskessson and many other good people were present . The same happened with the distribution of the inheritance among the heirs, in particular the household effects, the bed linen and the clothes that were still usable. In addition, there was the intensive nationwide trade in grain and flour, an ideal means of transport for the fleas. The trade was so intense that it was the only way to get salt for preservation and iron implements to the farms. There is also the religious interpretation of the plague as God's punishment. It led to pilgrimages and large crowds in front of the altars of the plague saints, an excellent basis for rapid expansion.

Decline in church income as a result of the plague

The collapse of the population initially led to many farm workers becoming self-employed on farms that had become desolate, so that there was an acute shortage of labor on the larger farms. Labor-intensive grain production could no longer be continued on a large scale. Only 20-25% of the workforce was available compared to the time before the plague. As a result, workers' wages skyrocketed. This meant that one had to switch to less labor-intensive livestock farming. An even more profound consequence was that even the large farmers could only cultivate as much land as their own families could cultivate. That was just as much as the smallholder farmed in the neighborhood. The tithe and other taxes decreased to 20-25%. This led to extensive social equality. Never before or later has there been greater equality in the Norwegian population than after the first wave of plagues. The small farmers produced just as much as the previous large farmers.

More epidemics

Sources

Although the survivors were suddenly offered better economic opportunities and marriages therefore increased sharply, the population did not increase in the following period, but rather fell slightly into the 15th century. The most important explanation for this are further waves of plague. However, the sources are meager and present many source-critical problems. The biggest of these is that the sources no longer give specific information about the nature of the diseases. The most common expression in the Icelandic annals for this is "great mass extinction in Norway" ( bolnasott mikill j Noregi ). The fact that the annals use bolnasott , ie "bubonic plague", does not necessarily mean that it is the bubonic plague. This specific phrase only applies to the 1379 epidemic. In 1348 the word Drepsótt (plague) was used for the plague . So the use of the word is not reliable. The words were used for all epidemic diseases, especially those that cause blisters on the skin. This is supported by news of a plague in a city, for example Bergen: If no clear correlation can be established with plague epidemics among trading partners, then it is probably other epidemics, for example typhus or cholera. Because the hygienic conditions were catastrophic. Latrines and wells were close together. One way of separating the plague from other epidemics is to correlate it with the plague waves in the rest of Europe. However, it turns out that there were plague epidemics in continental Europe whose occurrence in Norway is not mentioned. This can be attributed to the poor state of tradition, which had its cause in the death of the people responsible for the annals and their archiving. This could also be because the news of an epidemic came from Icelanders from Bergen or Nidaros to Iceland. As a rule, they did not know anything about the epidemics in the east. Many plague epidemics apparently remained locally limited. In any case, there is often no information about a nationwide spread. The Icelandic annals ceased to record epidemics in Norway from around 1400, the longest report the annals of the island of Flatey in Breiðafjörður and list the last plague in 1392. But the increased erection of altars for the plague saints in these years is an indication that the plague also occurred in Norway during these years.

In this way a list can be made of the years between 1348 and 1500 Norway was affected by the plague. A? after the number means “not occupied, only developed”, a country after it in brackets with the year means that the plague came from there and when it raged there.

In the following years from the 15th to 17th centuries Norway was affected by the plague: 1348/1349 (England 1348/1349); 1360; 1370/1371; 1379 (England 1379-1383); 1391-1392 (England 1389-1393); 1400 ?; 1405 ?; 1420 ?; 1435 ?; 1438-1439? 1452 (Netherlands 1450-1454); 1459, 1463 ?; 1465-1472 ?; 1485 ?; 1500 (England 1499-1501). In the period that followed until 1654, 14-15 plague epidemics were recorded, so that between 26 and 31 plague epidemics raged in Norway between 1348 and 1654. In 1485 the disease known as English sweat was rampant in England . However, it is unlikely to have made it to Norway, as the crew of a ship would not have survived the crossing within a few hours if the disease had been fatal.

This explains why the population could not increase. This also shows that the plague was not brought in from the Hanseatic cities in the 15th century, but from England and in one case from the Netherlands. This later changed. This also shows that trade relations with England were more intensive than with the Hanseatic cities.

The further waves of plague

The most important gateway for the plague in Norway was Oslo. Nevertheless, the Baltic Hanseatic cities do not seem to have been the main source. This may be due to the fact that, on the one hand, the ships to Oslo had already set out in the spring when the plague reached the Baltic coasts, and on the other hand, unlike the English ships, the ships did not carry any grain with them - the ideal means of transport for the plague flea over long distances . Therefore the grain deliveries from England are to be regarded as the main source for the plague epidemics in Oslo and, to a lesser extent, in Bergen. The Netherlands are far behind.

In 1358 a plague epidemic occurred in northern Germany, which reached the Netherlands in 1359 and England in 1360. The epidemic epidemic known in Norway for 1360 may therefore also have been a plague. This epidemic was apparently overlaid by another epidemic, which was given the name " barnadauði " (= child death ). Fatal epidemics specifically affecting children are mentioned more often in Norwegian sources. The term “infant death” suggests that it was smallpox . Another plausible explanation is that due to the previous decimation of the population, the number of children predominated, because these were still born, therefore increased in relation to the adults, who continued to decrease through natural death, and were therefore numerically more frequent victims of the plague. In addition, there are the secondary consequences in that sick adults were no longer able to care for the children, so that they died without being infected. The total mortality rate was no longer so high, however, because on the one hand the population had not yet recovered from the previous epidemic, and on the other hand the survivors of the previous plague, insofar as they were sick, still had a certain immunity. It is estimated that around 26,000 people fell victim to the disease.

The next epidemic waves came at shorter intervals and were initiated by the Oslo epidemic in 1370/1371 . A report dated August 15, 1370 to Håkon VI. depicts the plague in Oslo. Archbishop Olav, who was just there, had fallen victim to her. This plague apparently came from the Netherlands, where it raged, while it had ended in northern Germany and England in 1369. The sources also tell of a ship from Flanders that was calling at Oslo with Flemish fabrics around this time. For 1371, a mass extinction is recorded for western Norway in the Icelandic annals.

According to the Icelandic annals, the next epidemic came from 1391 to 1392 . It raged in northern Norway. That speaks for a starting point in mountains. The Flateyarannalen mention a mass extinction in the Oslofjord ( Viken ) for the year 1392, which must also have been introduced from England.

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Lease register of Bishop Øystein of Oslo.

Between the land register of Archbishop Aslak Bolt from 1433 and that of Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson from 1530, the rent for the 90 farms for which data are available for both years has fallen to 11%. This can be applied to the entire Trøndelag area. Further inland the rent fell much less. But that also means there that the population growth between the plague times was more than consumed by the next wave of plague. A continued weak population decline cannot be overlooked. With the conversion from grain cultivation to livestock farming, trade with the coastal areas “grain for dried fish” declined so far that the coastal population was deprived of their livelihood. This led to a migration of the coastal residents to the good but deserted farms near the central cities, which led to the desertification of many coastal towns. In many places only ghost places remained. A great social equality gradually reigned in the large regional centers because there was hardly any dependent labor. Because of the strong competition between the large landowners for the few workers, the rent fell dramatically to around 20-25%. This enabled the farmers to keep more of their harvest than before and to live better. The farmers' standard of living rose sharply. But there were also other consequences: the high population concentration close to the cities led to less goods being transported through the country with salt and iron and vice versa with fleas-contaminated grain and flour. Since non-peasant production and wage labor, for example in fur processing or in the building trade, declined, as much as possible had to be produced in-house. The farms therefore strived for extensive self-sufficiency . This weakened the spread of the plague.

While the number of farms in the area of ​​present-day Norway is assumed to be 64,000 for the time before Svarte dauen (73,000 with the areas in present-day Sweden), around 1530 there were around 24,000 and around 27,000 farms. Since 90% of the population lived on the farms, this decrease of about 63% allows a conclusion to be drawn about the population decrease in the total period from 1348 to 1530, whereby the absolute low point is to be assumed around 1470, about 30% of the figure before Svarte . The population is estimated at 120,000 in 1470.

The domestic political catastrophe comes in a letter from Queen Margaret of October 18, 1370 to her husband King Håkon VI. expressed by Norway. There she asks for money to buy food, otherwise they would starve to death in her castle in Akershus . The plague raged in Oslo and the surrounding area. The plague reached its peak just before harvest time. In it, she asked for money, not to be able to provide for herself from the surrounding area, but to procure food from abroad. The plague destroyed the livelihoods of the state power, i.e. the king, the nobility and the church. The army tax ( suffering tax) for equipping the troops and especially the ships was linked to the land rent by law. If this fell to 20-25%, tax revenue fell accordingly, which had a direct impact on the country's defense readiness.

The direct succession to the throne was impossible due to the death of the male successor, foreign noble families married in, and so the union with the neighboring country became a political and economic necessity. At the end of the 14th century, some new taxes were imposed, so that state revenues were “only” halved. With the decimation of the nobility came the decline of the administration. The real reason for the decline can be seen today that the agriculturally usable area of ​​Norway, in contrast to Denmark and Sweden, was so small that Norway was only able to maintain its own state with its own government in undisturbed production. The plague deprived the state of its livelihood.

The epidemics of the 16th and 17th centuries

The following epidemics raged in 1500, 1506, 1521, 1525, 1529, 1547, 1565–1567, 1582–1584, 1599–1604, 1619, 1625, 1629, 1636–1639 and 1654. The waves of plague ran quite synchronously with the Plague waves in England, Northern Germany and the Netherlands. The three epidemics between 1520 and 1530 stand out, the only decade with three waves of plague. It is also the only decade in which three plague epidemics raged in England. They are due to the growing economic development on the continent with increasing shipping traffic. This synchronization also makes it possible to distinguish the plague epidemics from other epidemics, such as typhus, smallpox, typhus and the like, which were not brought in from outside but can be traced back to the hygienic conditions in Norway. For Denmark there is still no reliable research on the plague for this period. While the plague was brought in mainly from England in the 16th century, it came equally often from the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and later the Netherlands was the main source. At that time, the Netherlands became Norway's main trading partner through imports of timber from there. Only the plague of 1629 must have been brought in from a north German Hanseatic city.

As long as foreigners were banned from trading north of Bergen, Bergen was the main hub. The archbishop in Nidaros sent dried fish to Bergen, and on the return voyage the ships took at most some wheat and rye for the archbishop's household, because Trøndelag produced enough grain, even a slight surplus. This was sold to the hinterland and was practically free of pest. Therefore, the northern inner Norwegian areas were largely spared from the plague. So the plague came to Nidaros less through trade than through pilgrims.

From the middle of the 16th century, the ban on trade with Northern Norway was slowly relaxed by royal privileges, so that European ships sailed as far as Nidaros. This also led to plague outbreaks in northern Norway from 1590 to 1609. Central Norway, on the other hand, was largely spared from the plague, as there were no trading towns there that were called by English or Dutch ships.

The average interval between epidemics was just under 10 years. A plague research commission for India established in 1905 has shown that after an epidemic essentially only rats still live that have become immune to the plague because they survived the plague, but this defense disappears after about 7-10 years. With high traffic intensity and a lively exchange of goods, the intervals could therefore also be reduced to 7 years. Even shorter distances are known only for England in the first half of the 16th century. But this only applies to large epidemics. Local outbreaks can be asynchronous. In Norway, major epidemics were confined to the southeast. The major migrations of the armies of the Thirty Years' War are also responsible for the epidemics in the first half of the 17th century.

So one can determine two lows in the population: one low around 1450 can be attributed to the late Middle Ages, another 1530 from the early modern period.

The plague from 1529 to 1530

Until now, the plague had been God's punishment for sins, so there was no point in fleeing from it. A major rethinking process began in the 16th century. They looked for natural causes.

The report of a small and local plague epidemic around 1525 sheds significant light on the change. In one parish there was a dispute between pastor and parish. When he came home from a diocese meeting in Hamar, the plague broke out a short time later. The congregation claimed that he had thrown his plague-infested clothes on the street so that the population should get the plague and no one entered the church anymore, so he had to be transferred. Here for the first time the thought becomes tangible that it is not God who sends the plague, but that it is transmitted between and from people, namely through clothing. The consequence of avoiding the pastor and the church was also new. The classic idea of ​​the disease-causing miasma was only varied in that the miasma stuck to objects and clothes and was exhaled from there. The early modern times brought up our own observation of the connections. The aristocrat Eske Bille , whose archives have been preserved, sent Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson a bottle of herbal brandy as medicine in 1531. Religious countermeasures are no longer mentioned. The Danish humanist and doctor Henrik Smidt wrote in 1535 En Bog om Pestilentzis Aarsage, foruaring og Legedom the EMOD (A book about the cause of the plague, the protection in front and its cure) ( ref : Smidt). He had studied in Rostock (1514), as did Olav Engelbrektsson (1507). Ancient medicine was rediscovered and religious explanations and practices declined. But there are also letters that deal with the subject in a purely religious manner. The old and the new view still lived side by side.

The worst wave was in 1529 . It lasted until 1530. In Halland, Denmark (on the Swedish side on the Kattegat coast ) it was covered by English sweat , the course of which leads to death in a few hours. In a letter of September 16, 1529 it is particularly emphasized that people died very quickly, within half a day, at most one day. The plague would only have led to death after three to five days. But this disease quickly disappeared because the rapid death of the infected greatly slows the spread of the disease. Also, not as many people fell victim to the English sweat as the plague that raged in southern Norway.

The plague from 1547 to 1548

Christian III of Denmark wanted to be crowned in Norway in 1547 according to Norwegian custom and ordered in a letter to Akershus to make the necessary preparations there, in particular to procure the food for him and his entourage. The castle captain Peder Hansen wrote back to Copenhagen on October 23 that this was impossible because of the plague. His butchers, clerks, and tax collectors all fell victim to the plague.

In 1549 there was an epidemic in southwest Telemark , which the bailiff there reported to the king: The iron smelting could not take place because there was not enough charcoal due to the death of the farmers. But he did not complain about a shortage of workers in the ore mine. That speaks against a plague. At that time, many German miners worked there as well as the mountain bailiff himself, Heinrich Pflug . It is therefore likely that they brought in a disease to which they were already immune. 1480 was rampant typhus in Europe. There is therefore a lot to be said for typhus. That would have been the first typhus outbreak in Norway.

The epidemics from 1550 to 1600

During this period, the Danish-Norwegian government did little to prevent the spread of epidemics in Norway. The typhus epidemic could then have been the starting point for another epidemic in the years 1550–1552, which broke out in Bergen and Vestlandet. Both times mainly adults were affected. Children survived. The humanist Absalon Pedersøn kept a diary from 1552. There he terminologically differentiated this epidemic from the plague. There he called the disease " Flekksott ". When he later experienced the plague in Denmark and Bergen, he consistently used the expression “ pestilens ” for the disease.

According to Absalon Pederssøn , a plague broke out in Bergen in 1565 , which was triggered by a Bremen ship coming from Gdansk with the plague on board at Bergen. The crew died. However, one of the crew members sold a pair of trousers to a young man beforehand, whereupon he and all of his housemates were attacked and died. “ A student named Ingelbrikt Pederssøn came to this farm and was immediately infected. But it is hoped that he will survive because the bumps have cracked on his armpits and the barber is tending to him. He fell ill on September 6th. “He actually survived because he was promoted to Kapellan a year later. The plague raged in Danzig at that time. In addition, Danzig had become an important export port for grain from northern Germany. In 1565 the plague also broke out in Oslo, probably brought in from Copenhagen, where the plague had already broken out in 1564. In 1566 the plague came from Bergen to Trondheim by ship. The population there at that time is estimated to be around 1,500. 40% of them died. Absalon Pederssøn reports 600 deaths. But there are documents that suggest that the plague ravaged the countryside in 1567.

The next plague broke out in eastern Norway in 1583 . It must have been brought from England to Oslo in the last ships in the autumn of 1582, from where in the early spring of 1583 it spread over land at the usual speed to Gudbrandsdalen and Hedmarken . Because in the Netherlands and the Hanseatic cities it did not break out until the summer of 1583, while in England the plague had raged since 1581. It is noteworthy that the pastor, from whom this message was received, never referred to the plague as “God's punishment”, while in 1583 the king called all bishops of Norway to prayer days against God's punishment. But the upper class also knew better: when the plague broke out in Copenhagen and Helsingør in the summer of 1583, the ferry connection to Haderslev in Jylland was interrupted to protect the king, who was currently in Jylland with his entourage.

But only for the time when the plague broke out in Copenhagen in 1592, administrative measures against the spread of the plague have been handed down, which provide insight into the context: According to a decree by Christian IV , no one except the grave diggers were allowed to enter the houses of the dead, and the trade in used clothes was banned. This is the first official text to attribute the plague to worldly causes. The religious view of God's punishment remained, however. Because in November 1593 the same king ordered three days of prayer to be held throughout the empire on three days in February. In the 16th century, changes in social behavior slowly began to take hold in Norway, which counteracted the spread of the plague. The plague in the Toten district (today Vestre Toten and Østre Toten ) did not spread to the then Nordre Toten district and the plague in Hedmark did not spread to Østerdalen .

At the end of the 16th century there was a change in the appearance of the epidemics. They broke out in many places at the same time, but over time they remained confined to ever smaller spaces. This is due to the increasing demand for wood in the Netherlands. In the 16th century, around 500,000 m³ of wood was exported to the Netherlands. The payment was made with grain and fashionable fabrics from Europe's leading weaving mills in Amsterdam , Deventer , Hoorn , etc., the ideal transport medium for fleas. During this time, 2000 ship landings are expected. On the south coast at the estuaries where logs could be floated and water-powered sawmills built, a whole chain of loading stations, some of which also became real settlements, for example Mandal and Flekkefjord in Vest-Agder , Arendal and Risør in Aust-Agder and Porsgrunn and its current district of Brevik, Larvik , Sandefjord , Holmestrand , Moss and Drammen , which arose from the two loading points Bragernes and Strømsø at the mouth of the Drammen river .

In 1599 , a plague epidemic broke out in Bergen. The pastor of Rødøy noted for 1599 that it began at St. Bartholomäi (= August 24) and spread over Stavanger , Trondheim and all of Nordland . According to the distribution pattern described above, the plague must have reached Bergen in mid-July. It can therefore only have come from the Netherlands. Because there there was a plague epidemic from 1599 to 1604, while in northern Germany the epidemic did not start until 1601 and in England only in 1602. The schoolmaster at the time in Bergen noted that around 3,000 people died in the district of the cathedral and the Kreuzkirche in 1600, and 164 people in the area of ​​the Hansekontor (i.e. among the Germans).

The epidemics in the 17th century

In 1603 the plague broke out in Tønsberg and in Østland. This emerges from the notes of the then mayor of Tønsberg. The first death occurred on August 16, 1603. His eldest son died on December 26 and his eldest daughter died “at the same time”. However, it is not clear from the context whether this was the first death at all, or just the first in his household. This means that the plague was introduced into Tønsberg around July 24th. In the records of the Bishop of Oslo Jens Nielssøn there are addenda from the time after his death in 1600, which were added by the later owner of the records, Pastor Jens Nilsøn in Strøm. Under the year 1603 there is a message that the pastor in Strøm in Sørdalen Palle Christoffersen Stub died of the plague on August 22, 1603. He also mentioned the "plague stains" that preceded death. This close succession rules out that the plague came to Norway via Tønsberg; because the death in Strøm should have taken place much later. Rather, it stands to reason that the center was again in Oslo and from there it was spread parallel to Tønsberg and Strøm. An important source of this plague are the tax lists for the collection of a building tax from the areas around Oslo and from all of eastern Romerike for the expansion of the Akershus fortress from 1604. There are a number of deserted farms listed, from which no tax could be levied because the inhabitants had largely died. The farms were divided into three categories: full farms, small farms (“half farms”) and Ödhöfe. In the last category, only those farms were included from which a tax could be expected, i.e. not desertions since the Middle Ages. However, that did not mean that they were deserted, only that they were operated in such a way that they could not raise taxes, that is, they were "dull" in a tax-technical sense. The areas immediately bordering Oslo are unfortunately not recorded because they had to do manual and tensioning services in the fortress construction instead of taxes, so that there are no sources from Oslo and the neighborhood. The list shows that the cottage makers were hardest hit. In their case, 25% of the farms became deserted, while the large farms were only affected by just under 4%. This is astonishing at first, since the large farmers with a lot of staff and many external connections would have a larger attack surface for the epidemic than the more isolated cottage growers. The explanation lies in the peculiarity of the spread of the plague through the grain: the large farmers essentially covered their grain needs themselves. The cottage farmers were dependent on purchases, for which they also carried out contract work, which at that time essentially consisted of logging, logging and rafting. Payment was made not only, but also through imported grain from England and the Netherlands, which was interspersed with plague fleas. There was another reason: in the second half of the 16th century there was a profound change in living conditions. Until then, the house was an elongated log house with an open fireplace and a smoke vent in the roof. The ground was made of tamped earth and covered with straw. Now on the rich farms a chimney was placed over the open hearth, a wooden floor was laid, and windows were built in instead of the skylights. The wooden floor could be kept clean. These more hygienic conditions were harmful to the rats and fleas. Therefore, the rats withdrew from the common rooms. This innovation was on the rise in the 17th century, but its scope is uncertain. But this change first took place on the rich farms and was only later implemented on the poorer farmers. In addition, there is probably also the different level of education. The knowledge about the infection had already spread among the large farmers, so that people kept their distance from the sick, while among the lower classes the old customs of visiting the sick were still maintained.

All in all, this time the plague was not so severe that the population decline could not have been compensated for in a few years. The general population growth was hardly slowed down during this period.

In 1602 and 1603, at least in the fiefs of Nedenes (now part of Aust-Agder ), Lista (now part of the Farsund commune ) and Mandal , both in Vest-Agder, a ban was imposed by the feudal lords during the plague to leave his place of residence. However, this was not a radical plague control measure. There are no signs of this in the following years either. These only come in connection with the great plague disasters in Denmark in 1618/1619.

In 1618 the next plague epidemic broke out in Bergen and the last one in the rest of Vestlandet. It was probably brought in from the Netherlands. Sources for this epidemic are the pastor Maurits Madssøn Rasch ( lit .: Rasch) on the island of Rødøy ( Helgeland , Nordland ) and Mikel Hofnagel in Bergen. The latter was limited to Bergen, while Madssøn also reported on the rest of Northern Norway. Hufnagel gives figures that indicate good access to spiritual registers. After him, 2,650 people died in the parish of the cathedral church in Bergen, 1,096 in the parish of the Kreuzkirche, among the Germans in Bryggen 278 people, a total of 3,997 people, i.e. almost 1,000 more than in the previous epidemic, which, however, can also be attributed to the population that has now grown again is. The plague spread over the Westland, i.e. into today's Fylke Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane , as the fiefs of the fortress Bergen were located there for their maintenance. The castle captain Knut Urne had to report to King Christian IV that he would not be able to pay the due tax on November 11th because the plague had ravaged the fiefdoms.

Bergen played a central role in the supply of grain to northern Norway. So the plague also came to Trondheim and some districts in Nordland, but not to Trøndelag . The absence of the stream of pilgrims after the Reformation is noticeable here.

The first measures

The great plague catastrophe in Denmark and Bergen in 1618 and 1619 finally led to energetic measures by the authorities against the spread of the plague. The quarantine for ships from plague areas was introduced. The castle captain of Kronenborg was instructed not to let people ashore from Bergen ships because of the plague there. Some houses in Helsingør were plagued because some people had been allowed to go ashore and orders were given that all infected houses be isolated. From the 1620s this became the predominant method of combating plague. The devastating plague epidemic, which was probably brought into Sweden from Denmark in 1620 and lasted until 1624, gave new impetus to control by radical means. Christian IV personally took care of this problem, as the number of reports, situation reports and his administrative measures against the plague show. He even used the military to prevent the plague from returning to Denmark from Sweden. The entire border against Sweden was closed, even for diplomatic communications with Russia and Germany, because the diplomats had traveled through plague-infested areas.

In 1623 the Båhus castle captain Jens Sparre responded to a decree from King Christian IV, in which he was asked to watch out for the development of the plague beyond the Norwegian-Swedish border and, if necessary, to close the border, with the news that the plague had reached Gothenburg and a tailor on the island of Hisingen near Gothenburg, which at that time (until the Roskilde Peace Treaty of 1658) still belonged half to Norway, died of the plague. The plague was within 1 mile of Båhus. The rest of south-east Norway was not yet directly threatened. The plague had invaded Värmland , which is adjacent to today's Østfold and South Hedmark , and also into the episcopal town of Skara in the north of Västergötland . On November 18, he reported that the plague had not spread to Norwegian territory, but continued to rage only on Swedish territory. The following winter ended the epidemic, so that the king permitted the opening of the borders by decree of January 11, 1624.

This correspondence shows a new development in Norwegian and Danish history, a centralized socio-politically organized fight against the plague. The central administration used the local administration and the military for this purpose. It reached its preliminary climax in a royal ordinance of January 15, 1625 on disease control. It was groundbreaking for the use of the entire state authority to combat epidemics and ultimately led to the end of the plague outbreaks in Norway. However, it was tailored to Danish conditions. Because right from the start she ordered the mayors of the city, together with the councilors, the pastor and the “doctors” (bathers) to choose people who would have to look after the sick in the event of an epidemic. Now there were hardly any cities in Norway, but there were many small loading stations without any municipal organization, let alone a mayor, with a lot of shipping traffic. It was a major gateway for the plague, and there were many plague cases there at the turn of the century. But even the concentration on the cities had an effect, because these had a much larger and international trade volume. The decisive factor, however, was § 2: As soon as it was known that an epidemic had broken out in a foreign city, all trade and traffic with it was forbidden, subject to severe penalties and confiscation. Even people from domestic locations where an epidemic has broken out should not be allowed into epidemic-free areas. In the event of a violation, these people should be housed in special pest houses for 4–5 weeks, i.e. a quarantine . Provisions have been made for the construction of such pesthouses. Where conditions did not allow special plague houses, inns could also be used. A plague house is mentioned only once in Norway, in 1654 in Bragernes near Drammen. People from houses where the plague had broken out were forbidden to mingle or let other people into the house. They had to keep doors and windows closed. That was against the miasm . The only exceptions were the pastor, the bather and the “plague master”. There followed regulations on isolated burial. Most recently, the provisions were made against the apparently widespread bad habit of dumping deceased service personnel at night somewhere on the street where no one knew the dead, in order to avoid the quarantine and still be able to escape from the city. The city administration was responsible for feeding those isolated in this way. The sources from 1630 and 1654 show that these regulations were observed in Oslo.

In the country, where the rat colonies of widely separated farms had no connection with one another, the observance of these regulations had a great effect, but not in the city. Because if a rat colony was weakened too much by the plague, then it could no longer defend its territory against other colonies. This meant that rats from the neighboring colonies penetrated and infected themselves and with them their own colony. So the plague spread slowly but inexorably through the closed buildings. This can be clearly seen in the last great plague epidemic in Oslo in 1654.

It soon became clear that there was only one effective defense against the plague: it had to be prevented under all circumstances from entering the country at all. This could only be done through a centrally coordinated closure of the borders. The only power that was able to do this was the state itself. Only the state leadership had the means to organize international reporting on the plague abroad, only it could centrally prevent trade with plague-infested port cities abroad, if necessary with action of the military. This led to a substantial expansion and intensification of the state apparatus. Domestic political control grew significantly and became an essential element of the early modern state. The Disease Ordinance of 1625 was a milestone in this process. The ordinance was renewed during the devastating plague in Bergen in 1629 and 1643.

New plague attacks

In 1624 the pressure of the plague on the Norwegian borders increased: 1620–1624 the plague raged in Sweden, especially in Gothenburg . At the same time there were major plague epidemics in England and the Netherlands as well as in many Hanseatic cities such as Bremen, Rostock and Danzig. In 1625 the plague raged in Copenhagen. It disappeared in the winter of 1625/1626. At a thing meeting on Finnøy in 1627 the following were announced as plague areas with which no traffic was allowed: The Hanseatic cities and the cities in Holstein, as well as Skien and the whole of Telemark . Cities in the south of Norway were not listed, suggesting that the plague no longer occurred there. Skien was particularly at risk as it held a key position in the timber trade. In 1626 , for example, at least 110 foreign ships called at Skien, 62 from the Netherlands, 13 from Denmark, 30 from Schleswig-Holstein, 4 from England and 1 ship from a Hanseatic city. 72 people died of the plague, 58 of them by May 1626. Here, too, the lower classes were disproportionately affected, which can be attributed to the poorer living conditions, such as tamped soil with straw or in the barn or stable of a large farmer; these were the usual sleeping quarters for servants at that time. Only the landlord and his wife had their sleeping places in the house. Oddur Gottskálksson translated the New Testament in Skálholt in the stable. It was the warmest place because of the cattle. The general spread of the floorboards, including among craftsmen and smallholders, lasted until 1750, in some cases longer. The local limitation to parts of Telemark is due to strict adherence to the royal decree on the isolation of infested areas.

In 1629 the plague raged in Bergen. The cemeteries were full and a new cemetery had to be designated, the St. Jacob's Cemetery. In the 7 from June to December 1629 a total of 3,183 people died ( Ref : Hofnagel). For the third time in three decades, a large part of Bergen's population was wiped out by the plague. That was the penultimate epidemic in Bergen. The epidemic was confined to mountains. The official measures began to take effect. The plague came from the Hanseatic cities, where it arose in the turmoil of the 30 Years War and raged from 1628 to 1630. If you count back the course of the plague from June 1629 described above, it was introduced in April 1629. The first spring ships left their home ports at the beginning of April. In the cold winter that followed, the epidemic broke off abruptly and flared up again the following spring, a sequence characteristic of the bubonic plague.

On July 12, 1629, the plague broke out in Trondheim - the last plague epidemic there. It lasted until New Year's Day 1630. 978 people died. The population of Trondheim at the time was in the order of 2,500. This means that around 40% of the population died from the plague. Here, too, the plague was limited to the city and did not reach the surrounding area.

In 1630 the plague broke out in Oslo (since 1624 Christiania). Unlike the plague of 1629, this does not have to have come from the Hanseatic cities. Because in 1630 the plague was also rampant in England. The customs lists obtained show that in the previous year between 75 and 100 foreign ships called in Oslo to load wood. The majority came from the Netherlands and the surrounding area, 10 from Hanseatic cities and 10 from England and Scotland. The further development of the ship types made it possible to start sailing earlier in the year and to continue sailing until later in autumn. It erupted in May 1630 and reached its peak in July and August. The plague may have reached Oslo as early as the late autumn of 1629. But there is much to suggest that it attacked the rat colonies in April 1630.

Back then it was a good old custom for the students and teachers of the cathedral school to accompany the coffin with psalms at a funeral. This custom could not be continued in view of the many funerals on the same day. He also violated the royal plague ordinance and was stopped. The bishop and the mayor issued a new funeral regulation: All persons who died on one day should be buried together the next day. When the church bells rang, all the coffins should be ready on the street. The students should stand by the last coffin on the street with the most dead. At the next bell, the coffins should be brought from the side streets onto this street. Then the funeral procession should move to the cemetery with all the coffins. As a result, many people died on the same day at that time. In a caption in a church, the depicted priest is described as the last of 1,300 plague deaths. Not all of the earlier inhabitants lived in the city of Christiania, because a major fire in 1624 drove away many inhabitants who had not returned but instead settled in what is now the “Gamle Oslo”, Vaterland and Grønland districts. Christiania itself should have had 3,000 residents. So almost half fell victim to the plague. But the city quickly recovered thanks to families who moved to Oslo from the surrounding area, where good money could be made from the timber trade.

The timber trade had become the gateway of the plague: 1602 in Arendal, 1620 in Mandal, 1625 in Flekkefjord and Langesund. But other innovations must also be taken into account, for example the new mining companies. A colliery was founded in Kongsberg in 1624 by royal decision . The sources there indicate that many journeyman miners fell ill. Kongsberg was supplied by Bragernes am Drammenelv, today a district of Drammen , an important timber handling center with inland rafting and many sawmills. There the plague seems to have had its starting point in Kongsberg. This also applies to the next wave of plague in Kongsberg in 1639. However, the origin has not yet been adequately clarified, as it had died out in Northern Europe in 1639 and in the years before. There were only a few cases of plague. Epidemics only occurred in Danzig and a few East Prussian cities. All that remains is the explanation that a ship with goods from the North Sea drove to Gdansk, unloaded its goods there and instead loaded grain and thus sailed to Bragernes to buy wood. A similar thing happened in 1565, when a ship from Bremen first called at Gdansk and from there brought the plague to Bergen. The mine directors from Kongsberg bought the grain in Bragernes to supply the miners. The port city of Tønsberg was also affected by the plague.

One sees two opposing tendencies in the historical development: The brisk timber trade with many loading points on the coast led on the one hand to high pressure of the plague epidemics on Norway with more and more plague outbreaks in the gates, on the other hand the changed understanding of the disease and the associated immediate and radical isolation the plague herd meant that these outbreaks were confined to increasingly narrow spaces.

The end of the plague epidemics in Norway

The last plague outbreak occurred in Bergen in 1637 . Hofnagel reports 2500 deaths from the plague and smallpox , probably waterpox. These mainly killed children who were already weakened by the insufficient supply of plague-sick parents. Research has shown that in a place where the plague broke out, 9 out of 10 children died if the mother died and the father survived; in the reverse case, if the mother survived but the father died, 9 out of 13 children died if both parents survived, 11 out of 47 children. The fact that more children died when the mother succumbed to the plague than when the father died is due to the infants who starved to death without a mother's breast. Adults were usually already immune. Conversely, children who contracted smallpox were more likely to die of the plague. No distinction was made at that time, as there was only one route of infection, the miasm. But it is believed that the main cause of death was the plague and not smallpox.

In general, many diseases are to be expected in the city, which decisively weakened the resistance to the plague. Wells, stables, dung heaps and sewage septic tanks were close together and the streets were full of rubbish and rubbish. The cows were driven daily through the city to the commons, and so the cow dung mixed with the garbage.

If you compare the five plague epidemics in Bergen since 1565 and based on experience that around 40% of the population fell victim to a plague epidemic, the following population figures result at the beginning of the epidemic:

Plague victims in Bergen 1565-1637 and population with a death rate of 40%
year Plague victims population
1565-67 2,050 5.125
1599 3,200 8,250
1618 3,997 10,000
1629 3,171 8,000
1637 2,500 6,250
All 14,918

These estimates are permissible because the relevant boundary conditions (living conditions, food procurement and working conditions) have not changed in the city during this time. The only thing we know nothing about the weather, which also had an impact on the severity of the epidemic. But the influence lies within the inaccuracy range of such an estimate. The official measures against the spread may also have had a certain influence, but this was rather minor in the city, as rats were not controlled. In the 70 years from 1565 to 1637 about 15,000 people died of the plague, 13,000 of them in the last 39 years from 1599 to 1637 alone. This contrasts with a strong population development between 1565 and 1618 despite two epidemics. This correlates well with knowledge about the influx of parts of the population from the surrounding area and the economic boom in the city in the same period. Between 1618 the plague tore large gaps in the population of Bergen, but they were repeatedly made up by the influx from the surrounding area, where the population also increased.

In 1645 a poll tax was levied in Bergen for everyone over the age of 15. That was 3668 people. The tax lists leave open the number of people under the age of 15. Censuses in Oslo in 1769 and 1801, a period with very little influx into the city and a dramatic decline in the number of inhabitants, show that the city's population was unable to maintain its population through fertility because the unsanitary conditions were much too high Resulted in child mortality ( lit .: Fossen). Nevertheless, one reckons with an average of 1.75 children per couple, because the many deaths among adults resulted in new marriages in which the partners brought half-orphan children from previous marriages or had taken in children of deceased relatives. At that time, population growth was always dependent on influx from outside. This takes into account careful calculations and comparisons with other cities with better data for a total population of around 6500 people.

The last plague epidemic in Norway broke out in the southern part of the country in 1654 . Oslo, which was now called Christiania, and its surroundings in the Oslofjord was affected. It had its origins in the Netherlands, where it raged from 1652 to 1656. In 1654 there was also an epidemic in Copenhagen that spread to many cities in Sjælland . But the epidemic came to Christiania so early that it must have been brought in from the Netherlands the previous autumn.

The first church books in Christiania were kept in 1648 and were account books for church activities with their income. This affects their source value; because the burials of the rich were listed individually with names and the amount paid, the burials of poor people were only mentioned in summary based on information provided by the undertakers. While in the years before the plague an average of 127 people were buried annually, the number of burials in 1654 was 1523. The epidemic broke out on July 30, 1654, when two girls died of the plague in the same household. So they had died three days before. The almost simultaneous death of all members of a household, which was observed in Oslo, is typical of the bubonic plague, in which the rat colony no longer provides sufficient food for the fleas and the fleas therefore attack humans at the same time. Of the 92 soldiers in the fortress, 39 died at the same time on November 1, 1654. It was only when the death rate swelled that the burial was ordered for the day following death so that the miasma could not spread. The speed of propagation described at the beginning fits in with the fact that four funerals took place on August 9, 11 times the usual average number of one funeral in three days. The peak was reached on September 24th with 25 funerals. The epidemic ended in the middle of November. No burial is recorded in the church register between November 12th and 18th. So the last plague epidemic also shows the typical pattern of the seasonal occurrence of the bubonic plague, which disappeared in cold and damp weather. The particular affliction of the fortress crew, especially in autumn, fits well into the picture of the bubonic plague: the transport of food to the fortress, the storage of flour and grain and the delivery of the tithe of grain in autumn led to a bloom of the rat colonies and the flea infestation. A total of 1,465 people died during the plague. If one takes into account the deaths that would have been expected anyway according to the general average, there are still 1440 deaths caused by the plague. This does not include the dead under the occupation of Akershus fortress, as the fortress did not belong to Oslo but to Aker. The population of Christiania immediately before the plague is estimated at 3–4,000 people. The estimate is based on an assumed death rate of 3.5% (from a census of 1769) in the total population and an average of 127 funerals in Christiania per year. However, the approach is dubious as the average death rate for all of Norway of 3.5% in the large cities has certainly been exceeded for the following reasons.

The hygienic conditions were just as catastrophic as described above for Bergen. There was a employed man in all of Christiania who had to clear garbage at night. There was no safe drinking water in the city. The normal death rate here was higher than the number of births: 127 funerals per year were compared to an average of 118.5 baptisms. The population could only be maintained through immigration. That was true for a long time afterwards. Between 1769 and 1801 (two years with the census), 50 more people died each year than were baptized. Benedictow therefore plausibly assumes 4% and also considers 4.5% possible, which leads to a population of 3,175 or 2,800 people, of which 40–50% died of the plague in 1654. But the uncertainties are still great, because the age pyramid deformed by the plague of 1630 is to be expected. After the plague of 1630, many young people had moved to the city and found both vacant apartments and work there. There was a real baby boom, so that the plague of 1654 hit a population with an above-average number of young adults. Most of their parents had already died. As a result, there was a temporary surplus of births and the death rate was much lower than normal. The parish registers show an average birth rate of 130 births per year from 1648 to 1650. For the following 3-year period there were only 106 baptisms per year. This also explains the aforementioned relatively high baptism rate of 118.5 on average for the entire period. This means that there are 20 more deaths than the annual average of baptisms.

The plague came from Christiania to Ullensaker in Akershus -Fylke in autumn 1654, 25 km north of Christiania. There are no direct sources for this, only a record of a thing meeting in Ullensaker from 1669, which speaks of a "plague 15 years ago". It also came to Trøgstad in Fylke Østfold , where it killed a third of the population from mid-September. How the epidemic got to this far inland isolated farming village cannot be determined.

The plague also hit the loading points by the sea in Asker . Many foreign ships came there to buy wood. These were the Arnestad, Bjerkås and Gisle loading points, now part of Asker, southwest of Oslo. Here, too, the phenomenon can be observed that the area between Christiania and these loading points, Bærum , has remained free of pest. From this it can be seen that the isolation of the epidemic was successful. The loading points were apparently infected by shipping traffic independently of one another. Bragernes (now the city of Drammen ) was also hit, ironically apparently by a royal ship that had illegally called into the loading point from the plague-infested port of Copenhagen to load wood. From there the last entry in the burial book has been handed down. Under December 27, it reads: “ Tomorrow Strøm's youngest and last child who died of the plague will be buried. ". This child is the last known plague victim in Norway.

In 1622, trade with the Netherlands was banned because of the plague there. In October 1664, 3 men from Christiania were sentenced in Copenhagen for entering a Dutch ship contrary to the strict quarantine regulations. In 1665 the same ban was imposed on England for the same reasons. In 1709 a ban followed against Danzig and other plague-infested cities on the Baltic Sea. When Christiania was threatened by the plague epidemic in 1711 , all ships had to adhere to the 40-day quarantine. Because the plague raged in Sweden, all trade with Sweden was banned and a border strip of 5 km was kept free from people. Military was moved to the border to shoot anyone who tried to cross the border. Norway was spared the plague. Helsingør and Copenhagen were infected in Denmark. The government closed a ring around the two cities with large troops so that no one could escape. The population was literally besieged and a large part of the population died. These measures were implemented in many countries, so that the plague gradually disappeared from Europe. The last epidemic in England was in 1665–1666. She disappeared from the Netherlands at the end of the 1960s. The plague ended in France in 1669, but a ship contaminated with the plague came from Turkey, broke the quarantine regulation and unloaded its cargo in a small town near Marseille. The plague raged again in the south of France and half of the inhabitants of Marseilles fell victim to it, although all military means were used to fight against the escape from the plague-infested areas.

Summary

By then, Norway had been ravaged by the plague for over 300 years. The population shrank to a third and was lower at the end than at the end of the Viking Age. The minimum is to be set between 1450 and 1470. This triggered enormous social upheavals. A large rural exodus and concentration of the population in the few larger cities was the result. The frequency of the epidemics increased with the growing shipping traffic in the course of the export of wood to the Netherlands and England in the early modern period. A change was initiated with the change in the understanding of epidemics from God's punishment to the natural explanation of causes, which led to Christian IV's isolation measures. The population increase up to the High Middle Ages led to more and more cultivation of the land, which not only led to its areal expansion, but also to the division of existing farms. This is reflected in many additions to the place names, such as “Eastern”, “Western”, “Upper”, “Lower” etc. The new settlers had of course received the poorer parts, so that they remained at the subsistence level and a peasant proletariat was created. This high medieval period from 1250 to 1319 has been glorified by national romantic historiography as the Great Age of Norway, but it was actually a time of general misery. But the population growth had also led to more state revenue and thus to greater military power and more effective national defense.

When the population sank rapidly as a result of the plague, the state revenues, which were linked to the management of the farms, also fell. The cultivation was concentrated on fewer, but more profitable farms and the competition for the surviving farm workers drove up wages. On the one hand, the plague was a constant threat and people lived in constant fear of death. On the other hand, the survivors fared much better after the epidemic, as competition for resources had diminished. At least this was the case for the smallholders. The plague thus created great social equality. Because even the large farmers who used to work for themselves were no longer able to produce more than the family could manage themselves due to a lack of labor.

The plague epidemics were ultimately the background for the loss of statehood in 1536. The population decline went below the minimum that was necessary to maintain an independent Norwegian state. Tax revenue was too low to be able to finance a state apparatus of its own, and there were too few men of military age for the army. Only in the 17th century and later did the population grow in such a way that Norway could become an independent state structure again, in 1814 in personal union with Sweden, in 1905 as an independent and independent state. For the Norwegian state there is apparently a kind of “critical mass” of the population that is necessary for an independent state system. It originated between 850 and 1050. It fell below this level in the course of the plague epidemics, which led to the end of statehood, and only slowly grew again to such an extent that statehood could arise in the 19th century.

The loss of independence under Christian III. also led to the loss of the language, since only Danish-speaking officials and clergy were used in Norway. Oddur Gottskálksson made a translation of the Bible ( Lit .: Oddur Gottskálksson; introduction by Jón Aðalsteinn Jónsson) into Norrøn. The effort at the time and his family background lead to the conclusion that the work was intended for the Norwegian market. The king only allowed the sale in Iceland. All laws and decisions were now made in Danish. Danish became the official language in Norway - but not in Iceland. This is why Iceland has largely been able to retain its language, but Norway has not. An Icelander can read Snorris Heimskringla in the original text without difficulty, a Norwegian cannot.

Footnotes

All information and conclusions are taken from the literature listed (usually Benedictow). Own views and conclusions have nowhere been incorporated.

  1. ↑ a b Lunden p. 610 f.
  2. ↑ Walløe p. 21.
  3. ↑ Benedictow p. 52 f.
  4. ↑ Lunden, p. 624.
  5. ↑ Diplomatarium Suecanum No. 5702
  6. ↑ Lunden p. 626.
  7. ↑ Storm 1888 p. 275
  8. ^ Regesta Norvegica No. 1158
  9. ↑ Diplomatarium Norvegicum VII, No. 230
  10. ↑ Storm 1888 p. 276.
  11. ↑ Benedictow p. 89
  12. ↑ Diplomatarium Norvegicum No. 355
  13. ↑ Benedictow
  14. ↑ Benedictow p. 101
  15. ↑ Storm 1888 p. 281 for 1377 and p. 412 for 1379
  16. ↑ Storm 1888 p. 213
  17. ↑ Flatøbogens Annaler, Storm 1888 pp. 379-426
  18. ↑ Diplomatarium Norwegicum I No. 409
  19. ↑ Sandnes 1971 p. 215 ff.
  20. ↑ Benedictow, p. 178
  21. ↑ Diplomatarium Norvegicum I No. 409
  22. ↑ Journal of Hygiene 1906-1914
  23. ↑ The first written mention of brandy in Norway
  24. ↑ Diplomatarium Norvegicum Vol. 9 No. 644
  25. ↑ Diplomatarium Norwegicum Vol. 13 No. 686
  26. ↑ Ackerknecht, p. 30
  27. ↑ Pedersøn p. 3
  28. ↑ Benedictow p. 213
  29. ↑ Moseng (1996) p. 465.
  30. ↑ NRR Vol. 3 No. 320 v. November 17, 1593
  31. ↑ Hofnagel p. 179
  32. ↑ Storm 1880 p. 150 ff.
  33. ↑ Erichsen; Huitfeldt-Kaas p. 279
  34. ↑ In the Heimskringla , Ólafs saga helga, it is described how the Queen Mother Ásta prepared her house for Olav's visit: “ She commissioned four women to furnish the restaurant. You should provide these with carpets and the benches with upholstery as quickly as possible. Two men carried straw on the floor ... "
  35. ↑ Holmsen p. 293 f.
  36. ↑ Brevbøger Vol. 14, p. 469
  37. ↑ Corpus Constitutionem ... 1897, p. 75 f.
  38. ↑ Seierstadt p. 560
  39. ↑ Daae p. 286; Fladby p. 270
  40. ↑ Hofnagel p. 201 calls it " child pox "
  41. ↑ Schofield p. 118 f. for the English city of Colyton in the years 1645–1646
  42. ↑ a b Sprauten p. 361
  43. ↑ Benedictow p. 302 f.
  44. ↑ Collett p. 324
  45. ↑ Benedictow p. 311 f.
  46. ↑ Collett p. 322
  47. ↑ Benedictow p. 125; quite dominant opinion among Scandinavian historians

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