140 Burkhardt
Hanseatic merchants in Bruges. The golden age of Bruges as the trading center
in Flanders was already history in the late fifteenth century, and the kontor
as a whole moved to Antwerp in 1520.29 Thus, we can say that the monastery
served as the central building of the social, religious and political activities of
the Hanseatic kontor in Bruges for the most of its time.
In Bergen the merchants were not divided into groups according to their
origin. Here the merchants from the Wendish towns outnumbered all other
Hansards by a huge margin. Lübeck was the most important hometown until
the early sixteenth century, when merchants from Bremen started to take lead-
ing positions at the kontor. Wismar, Stralsund, and to some extent Rostock,
Greifswald, and Hamburg also showed a lot of interest in the internal matters
of Bryggen, the kontor in Bergen. At Bryggen the merchants elected three alder-
men and probably eighteen deputies, the Achteinen. In the older literature we
find that six aldermen were elected, which was supposed to be adopted from
the kontor in Bruges, but this assumption was based on the wrong interpre-
tation of a single source.30 There is evidence for aldermen in Bergen by the
late 1360s. Also, in Bergen, the number of merchants who were burdened with
administrative tasks was reduced in the late fifteenth century. In 1476 the num-
ber of aldermen was reduced to one and the deputies to eight. One reason for
this reduction might lie in the successful role of the secretary of the kontor, a
position that was introduced in the 1450’s.
A specialty of Bryggen was its inner structure. Like the kontors in London
and Novgorod, it was situated on a fenced area. But as the Hansards took over
this place, they adopted their own way of organizing it.31 At Bryggen, one or
two rows of houses bordered on an alley that led down to a landing place at the
harbor. All the buildings connected to the alley made up a yard or, in the case
of two rows of houses, a double yard. Each yard had its own name and council,
which consisted of all merchants living in it. Some administrative functions
of the kontors in London and Novgorod were delegated to the yards. Thus, for
example, a yard’s merchants were responsible for their own wood and beer;
they collected taxes and fines, and had to take care for the fire protection and
stability of the buildings in their yards.32 This shared burden of administration
might be another reason for the comparably small number of aldermen neces-
sary to run the kontor in Bergen.
29 Blanckenburg (2001), 235.
30 Burkhardt (2006), 47–52.
31 Burkhardt (2005b), 61.
32 Burkhardt (2006), 36–41.