The Office by Øystein Hellesøe Brekke is the story of the Hanseatic League in Norway, now for the first time collected in a single comprehensive presentation.
Around 1350, just after the ravages of the Black Death, Hanseatic merchants from northern Germany established an organization in Bergen: The Office. The Hansa merchants already dominated trade in Northern Europe with similar offices in London, Bruges and Novgorod.
They had their own rules and legal systems, and the Hanseatic cities equipped armies and military fleets to secure their own interests when necessary. In the 15th century, there were up to 2,000 permanent Hanseatic residents in Bergen, Oslo and Tønsberg. They were a political and military power in Norway and would remain so for over 400 years.
Wealth and tragedy
The Office by Øystein Hellesøe Brekke focuses on this period in Norwegian and Nordic political history and at the same time provides an exciting look at the everyday lives of ordinary people in Norway, fishermen farmers and urban citizens.
– «The book is about the merchant – the Hanseatics who came to Norway from the continent over a period of half a millennium and traded here, in Tønsberg, Oslo and at Bryggen in Bergen, where they established the large settlement known as ‘The Office’,» says Hellesøe Brekke.
– It’s about good times and bad years, wealth and tragedy, tough power politics and intricate diplomacy, peaceful trade and brutal wars, old customs and constant development and change. And, not least, the people who experienced and shaped all this,» he explains.
About the author
Øystein Hellesøe Brekke is a historian who graduated from the University of Bergen with a master’s thesis on the Hanseatic Office in Bergen in the period 1490 to 1510. With his in-depth knowledge of Hanseatic and Nordic history in the late Middle Ages, he is an authority in the field.
The office launches on October 18.
