Across the bay from the church my grandparents (Haakinson) were married in before they moved to America is the Bryggen section of Bergen, Norway. Bergen was founded in the 12th century as a trading post. In the middle of the 14th century, German merchants selected Bryggen as one of perhaps 140 trading posts (kontors) as part of the Hanseatic League. These kontors were located from England to Russia along the North and Baltic Seas and in the Rhine River Valley of Germany. Some cities that the Hanseatic League founded might be familiar to many of you. In Germany, there were Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, and Cologne. There were Krakow, Poland; Stockholm, Sweden; Riga, Latvia; and Tallinn, Estonia, along the Baltic coast. They built trading center enclaves within the existing towns of Bergen, London, Antwerp, Belgium, and Novgorod, Russia. Of all the Hanseatic kontors, Bryggen is the only one to have survived. So significant are Bryggen’s buildings that in 1979, UNESCO declared Bryggen to be a World Cultural Heritage site during its second selection session.
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