The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

128 SCANDINAVIA.Saugesund guards the northern entrance of the Eukke-fiord over againstStavahger. But the chief city of the seaboard between the Naze and Cape Stadtis the ancient Bergen, formerly Bjorgrin, or " Highland Fen," founded in thesecond 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 numeroussmaller crests. The native place of the poet Holberg and the naturalist MichaelSars, 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 townwithin a town, consisting of granaries and warehouses raised on piles, connectedwith the mainland by pontoons, and defended by a garrison of 3,000 valiantFig. 64. Troxdhjem.Scale 1 : 200,000.clerks and retainers. In 1763 was sold the last house belonging to this Germancolony ; but a large number of family names still recall the famous traders whohad almost monopolized the traffic of Bergen in the fifteenthcentury, and whosearchitectural taste has imparted to the place an aspect different from that of allother Norwegian towns. A still older monopoly granted to the local traders hadbeen the cause of the final rapture of all communication between Scandinavia andthe American continent.The development brought about by spontaneous impulseand free trade was not maintained by royal charters. The right of visiting theGreenland shores was restricted to Bergen skippers exclusively ; but when thesewere massacred by their Hanseatic rivals in 1484, the secret of the highway to theAmerican waters was lost to Norway.