Post by Grubb.
In 1360 a guild of German merchants, the Hansa, created an overseas office in Bergen. These merchants, the renowned Hanseatic League, dominated trade between north-east and north-west Europe for the next couple of hundred years. The area where they had their offices in Bergen, the Bryggen, has retained the original architecture from that period and the narrow alleys are now honeycombed with gift shops and art galleries. What I found fascinating about these plank-boarded wooden buildings was the way they leaned on each other like two opposing metaphors describing the Hanseatic essence, mutual support on one hand and bargaining pressure on the other.
