C6 Trading in Bergen. C6 The Trumpet of Nordland

Trading in Bergen

In the two lower showcases you can see a number of items of pottery as well as pieces of tobacco pipes. They were found at the old Sami dwelling site in Kjøpsvik. Next to them we have placed copies to show what the objects looked like in their original form.

These are a few examples of goods that were traded by the Sami at the docks in Bergen.

These small items can tell us a good deal about daily life of the Sami fisherman farmers in Kjøpsvik. The whole family ate from a communal dish of food.

These dishes were made in Trondheim from 17th–19th c.

Sometimes they were decorated with fingerprints. At meals they could drink white wine from Germany. The wine came in kegs that you can see in the showcase.

They were made in the 16th and 17th c. It could well be that both mother and father lit a pipe after the meal. Such long-stemmed ceramic “chalk pipes” often came from Holland and England together with tobacco.

In the upper showcase are parts of three engraved spoons made of reindeer horn. The one on the left was found at Helland, Tysfjord, the one in the middle from Kjeldebotn, Ballangen, and the one on the right from Straumsnes, Hamarøy. The Sami bartered or sold the spoons to the North Norwegian population. Similar spoons have also been found during excavations at the docks in Bergen.

There, they were either sold or given to silversmiths so that similar designs could be made in silver.

The Trumpet of Nordland

The well-known priest and writer, Petter Dass, commented Sami boatbuilding in “The Trumpet of Nordland”, a literary work from c. 1690: There the Sami chop planks and boards from which are made the most loving cargo boats that have ever been found on the currents.