Kontors and Outposts 147
of one case of death caused by the plays during the Late Middle Ages. There
is a lot of speculation about the reason for these violent rites. However, it is
likely that there are several ideas in them. First, the boys had to shift their pri-
vate environment and loyalties. Second, participating in the brutalities made
all members of the household part of a violation of normal life’s rules. Since
this violation was sanctioned through the organized form of the rites, it still
made them accomplices in a semi-criminal act that only they shared with
each other. Thus, the ritual beating up of newcomers also strengthened ties
of already established members of the household, yard, and kontor. Third, the
rule that every newcomer had to undergo the plays would have made sure that
no one could drop out of the social hierarchy by virtue of birth, wealth, or
age. No matter how things developed in reality, the fictional equalization of all
members during the plays was an important mental pillar of the loyalty of all
boys, assistants, and merchants to the legal and social rules at the kontor and
to each other.
Once at the kontor, the boys had to take on cleaning, cooking, and good
transports. Their cooking and cleaning, however, left much to be desired. The
merchants in London saw themselves forced to issue a paragraph in the kon-
tor’s statutes regulating that waste had to be disposed and not to be thrown
away in front of a neighbor’s door or under a crane.44 Also in the Novgorod
Schra, we find regulations that ask to leave the brewery behind in a clean con-
dition and not to cover roads and alleys with rubbish.45 From a testament of
Israhel Ruschman, a merchant who used to visit Bergen in the 1450s, we know
that he let a Norwegian women wash his clothes against payment,46 normally
one of the boys’ duties. Boys didn’t have much privacy at the kontor. Their labor
days were long and once finished, they had to share a small room with up to
five or more other boys. In Bergen, fire was forbidden in all the wooden liv-
ing houses at the kontor, and windows wouldn’t be opened often because of
the cold and moist climate. This led to uninviting conditions. As all the other
inhabitants of the yard, the boys spent most of their free time in the common
hall. The boys were under the absolute sovereignty of the houselord, whether it
was the merchant himself or his partner or assistant, running the business at the
kontor. The houselord was responsible for their offences and had the right and
duty to punish them. But the boys did most of the hard physical work at the
kontor, and they also received a basic education, something that many of them
44 Statutes of the kontor in Bergen (1572), §§ 48, 49.
45 Statutes of the kontor in Novgorod (4th version, 1355–1361), §§ 3–9, 42.
46 Bruns (1900), 94f.