The Dutch in Norway (1550 – 1750)

By Margit Løyland

Dutch ships are “searching every nook and cranny” for timber and food, the customs officer in Flekkefjord wrote to the authorities in Copenhagen in the mid-17th century. For several hundred years, from the late Middle Ages until the latter half of the 18th century, Dutch traders and skippers went to Norway for timber, fish and copper. Many came back to the same areas year after year. The skippers Johan Floris from Emden and Arian Gosse from Rotterdam were two of them.
Around 1620, it is estimated that about 400 ships sailed to Norway every year. Many came from the important seafaring towns around the Zuider Zee, such as Hoorn, Enkhuizen, Harlingen and Hindeloopen. But trade between Norway and the Netherlands had been well underway as early as the middle of the 15th century. It was growing so rapidly that regulations were needed. Around 1440, the Dutch were awarded privileges in trade with Norway. Ships from e.g. Zierikzee and Amsterdam received royal permission to trade with Bergen, which had previously only been granted to the Hanseatic League.
The brothers Gabriel and Selius Marselis established themselves in Christiania (today Oslo) in the mid-17th century. They were wealthy and lent money readily. The Dano-Norwegian monarchy borrowed from them repeatedly, usually when the king needed to finance a war. As repayment, the Marselis brothers could buy up land all over Norway. For a period from the 1640s onwards, the brothers were actually the biggest landowners in the country. They had properties from Bohuslen to Trøndelag. They took over all the big properties that governor Hannibal Sehested had owned in eastern and southern Norway and they owned Bærum ironworks, the Eidsvoll Verk factory and other factories. They traded in iron, weapons and ammunition, delivered supplies to the army and lent the monarchy huge sums.
Cornelia Bieckers came from a well-established Amsterdam family. She was the daughter of the mayor of the city. In 1656, she married the wealthy Jochum Irgens in Amsterdam. He owned several houses and properties in the city, but also had been chamberlain to the Dano-Norwegian royal family. The monarchy had given him privileges related to the new copper mines in Røros and he had been the main owner there since 1647. Cornelia became involved in the operation of the copper mines and in real estate business in Trøndelag, Nordland and Troms. She continued as the owner until 1686, ten years after her husband died. The Røros mining company was a major exporter of copper to the European market. Both Norwegian and Dutch merchants became actively involved in the copper business. For a long period, as much as 80 percent of all the copper from Norway was exported from Røros via Trondheim directly to Amsterdam.
Dutchmen such as Willem Barents and Jan Jacobs May van Schellinkhout went on expeditions to find new trade routes to the major spice and silk markets in Asia. This led to considerable Dutch activity in the far North, and there were a large number of Norwegian sailors on board the Dutch ships that sailed to Arkhangelsk and other parts of northern Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the hundreds of Dutch people who sailed along the Norwegian coast was Jappe Ippes. He settled in Nordmøre and started the first production of stock fish (dried salted fish) in Norway. When production was at its peak, more than 70 tons of stock fish were exported annually to the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Spain.
Contact with the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and the Calvinistic Dutch people also affected religious life in Norway. In the 1660s, Didrik Meyer was sentenced to death for having sold a few dozen Reformed hymn books. After four years as a sexton in a Danish-Norwegian church in Amsterdam, Didrik had moved to Kvinesdal and brought with him the linguistic, ethnic, economic and religious experiences of the Amsterdam melting pot.

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