146 Burkhardt
a merchant’s knowledge. All Hansards profited from this exchange, following
the old wisdom that only a well-informed merchant can be a successful one.
But life at the kontors was much more than pure business.
Besides monasteries, the kontors might have been the most male-dominated,
flat-sharing communities in the Middle Ages. Nearly all involved in the
Hanseatic trade were men. At the kontors in London, Bergen, and Novgorod,
women were not allowed to live permanently inside the fenced area. Thus,
merchants, assistants, and boys had to organize life at the kontor themselves.
They had to carry out all duties, even those that were usually considered part
of the women’s work sphere. Most of these tasks were taken on by boys, who
lived at the kontor as helping hands and were to get a basic education in read-
ing, writing, calculation, and business matters. They usually left their homes
in one of the Hanse towns or in the rural areas of the Low German provinces
by the age of 11 or 12 to accompany an older relative who was a merchant in a
Hanse town. Before they entered their master’s house, boys in Novgorod had to
live with a Russian farmer family for half a year to learn Russian.42 This was not
necessary in Bruges, Bergen, and London, as the Germanic languages spoken
there did not differ as much from Low German as they do today. Furthermore
Low German was the business lingua franca in the Baltic and North Sea towns,
so merchants could communicate with suppliers without any problem.
After they left their families, the boys entered a new union of tradesmen.
Their loyalty was no longer with the family at home, but with their houselord
and the other merchants at the kontor. From the kontor in Bergen, we are well
informed of the way the boys were introduced into their new home.43 In the
famous “Bergen plays,” the newcomers had to undergo several rituals of physi-
cal violence and psychological humiliation. These procedures varied slightly
from yard to yard, but general characteristics were dunking into the harbor and
waste holes, beating and kicking by the assistants and older boys, and hanging
up in the chimney. After they were finally beaten up, in a covered corner in
the meeting room they had to take an oath to follow the yard’s rules, serve the
other members of the household, and entertain with jokes and songs. Usually
the boys recovered quickly. Most of them were used to physical privations and
this rite de passage was the usual way to get admitted to an interpersonal union
in the Middle Ages. We know such examples among others from boys partici-
pating in the hay harvest for the first time, introduction rites at universities
and monasteries, and the consecration of new craftsmen, many of which sur-
vived in some form until modern times. Consequently, we are only informed
42 Angermann (1997), 284.
43 Hartung (1877).