Die Kontroverse um die Färöer ca. 1524–1536

Abstract

This article examines the efforts of Norway’s council of the realm to rescind the governing offices and trading rights of Hamburg merchants in the Faroes between the mid-1520s and mid-1530s. The limited body of prior research on the subject focuses on the commercial aims of opposing parties, treating their dispute as part of the long-standing conflict over the western Norwegian town of Bergen’s status as the staple market in North Atlantic trade. While the redirection of Faroese trade from Bergen to Hamburg was a motive, it is argued that the council and its allies were at least equally concerned by the loss of public revenues, including taxes, land rents and penal fines, which Hamburgers withheld as feudal benefices and as remuneration for service to the kings of Denmark and Norway. This was part of a broader dispute about the authority of monarchs, who ruled the Norwegian realm from Denmark, to grant offices and trading rights in the Norwegian tributaries without conciliar sanction.