Embetskjøpmennene i Danmark og Norge på 1600-tallet

Merchant officials in Denmark and Norway in the 17th century In the 17th century, both foreign trade and taxation grew strongly in Norway. There was a relationship between these two phenomena, and the interaction between them resulted in the creation of a new elite in Norwegian towns. Officials of the Crown had the difficult duty of enforcing steep tax increases, which in fact exceeded the growth in trade. The executors of taxation were the servants of the county governors, namely the bailiffs. Both the governors and the bailiffs came mostly from Denmark. The bailiffs were usually merchants’ sons from Danish provincial towns. In Denmark, merchants in these towns organized trade for the local nobility. Now they did the same in Norway. The largest financial transactions took place in the capital of the monarchy, Copenhagen, in interactions between high-ranking officials and merchants, which generated large fortunes for those who took part in them. What happened in Denmark was reflected in Norwegian towns. The largest concentration of accumulated wealth could be found in the three principal cities: Bergen, Kristiania and Trondheim, but the interaction of Crown revenue and trade was widespread in towns where the county administration was situated as well. In this chapter, the main focus is on the administrative centre of Bratsberg county (now Telemark), Skien. The bailiffs of the county had spectacular careers as merchants and entrepreneurs in the lumber trade. This was based on their relationship to the peasants as tax collectors. The peasants paid the taxes in timber, which the bailiffs processed into different kinds of building materials, mostly in sawmills, producing boards for shipment to England, the Netherlands and other countries. After they resigned as bailiffs, they continued to participate in this trade, in combination with other official functions in the management of the town and the county. Similar career trajectories were pursued in other Norwegian towns during the 17th century. The 18th century witnessed the growing separation of Crown officials from trade.