Bergen and the Hanseatic Bryggen

German merchants of the Hanseatic League ran one of their four great foreign offices, the Kontor, on Bergen's wharf from about 1360 until 1754, buying dried cod from northern Norway and selling grain in return. They lived as a closed community of unmarried men in long rows of wooden buildings. Rebuilt after repeated fires on the medieval plan, the wharf still stands, with the archaeology of the old town beneath it.