 From the end of the Viking Age there is an economic boom going through Scandinavia with an increased surplus production and an increased trade and This is also visible in the inland areas With a large-scale utilization of resources such as iron hunting and trapping and various stone resources and The same period also sees the development of several marketplaces That is places with a somewhat different function and location than the Viking Age town like Kaupang and Oslofjord Now Marketplace may not be the best term as these places develop further towards town or a proto town But some of these places that emerged from the end of the Viking Age They end up as important medieval towns as Frode has talked about While others never become a proper town But rather goes out of use and This is the story of these places like the failed towns And I wish to highlight the importance of these places and explore the reasons why they eventually failed In terms of structure, I will first outline the main resources and the commodities that were involved in the trade. I will then present the most important trading places in Norway during this period As there are several important trading places, but only a few that survives through the Middle Ages And I wish to discuss the possible reasons for this development and focusing mainly on the trading places or the marketplaces Called Borgen and Kaupangr Large parts of Scandinavia are forests and mountains In other words outfield areas In the region medieval laws, these are considered common land And in theory free to use and to be exploited by anybody However, the common land was still mostly used by the farms neighboring the common land And a lot of the commodities came from the outfield of the common land such as iron Furs, skins, antlers, soapstone vessels and honing stones Now these have been exploited throughout the Iron Age But it is at the end of the Viking Age we see a considerable increase in the resource exploitation And a massive regional surplus production emerges And a major factor that enabled this development is the monetarisation of the society And stable economic networks and of course places of trade The trade took place on a number of sites And some of these meeting and trading places evolved into seasonal marketplaces or more permanent marketplaces And some such as Bergen or Thönsberg Increasingly grows in size and importance and became important towns And of course while others do not and we can call them failed towns Now these are places that are less known today But in the early and high Middle Ages these were sites of high economic and political significance And this map shows the most important places of trade for Norway in this period And some of the resources and commodities that was included in the trade Today I want to focus on the marketplaces of Kaupanger and Borgun Now these are among the most important trading venues in Norway that never evolved beyond the High Middle Ages And as this map shows you can see that Kaupanger is centrally located As a focal point between the inland resources and the populous areas of western Norway Archaeological investigations has uncovered charcoal pits and a number of forges at Kaupanger And based on these finds as well as the location it is likely that iron was an important commodity at Kaupanger In Sverre Saga written at the end of the 1100s the marketplace of Kaupanger is described And although Kaupanger today is a quiet and small place The saga paints a picture of a densely populated place With merchants, stores of foods, saunas and a developed harbor And the organization of Kaupanger appears to follow a pattern that is also seen in other western coastal places Such as Borgun and Bergen Borgun was the largest marketplace in western Norway and then of course not counting Bergen And a large-scale excavation have been carried out Although a complete publication is still missed These excavations uncovered a thick cultural layers and over 300 graves from the early Middle Ages And the excavation also shows several house remains The earliest house remains seems to be Lighter houses But when you come to the 1100s you see more permanent and larger buildings As well as the houses there are remains of crafts Crafts production such as metal textiles leather and woodwork And at the beginning of the 1200s there are four stone churches at Borgun And this alone shows the importance of Borgun in this period But of course everything comes to an end And from the late 1200s we see signs of an economic decline For instance around 1300 there is a marked fall in the iron production And this is five decades before the Black Death And two decades before the Famines And this downturn is visible across large parts of western and central Europe For instance shown by a significant decline in the construction activity from around 1300 And this seems also to be the case for the marketplaces From the first half of the 1300s one of the churches at Borgun is close to a collapse And in a low amendment of 1384 it is clear that marketplaces have more or less gone out of use This photo is an excellent illustration of the collapse or the decline And it's for a smaller boat house placed inside the larger boat house connected to the lay down Looking beyond the high middle ages We see that towns such as Bergen and Tundsberg increases in importance While places like Kaupanger and Borgun lose their significance The fact that we see this decline of a large part of Europe indicates that we must look at major social changes But of course also regional factors are at play With regard to Kaupanger There is a shift in the iron production which makes Kaupanger as a location or as a marketplace less strategic In the course of the 1200s there is an influx of cheap Swedish blast furnace iron Which seems to replace the iron that was produced in the Norwegian inland This meant that Kaupanger lost much of its main economic basis And with that its political significance Regarding Borgun The increasing importance of stockfish as so a dried cod From northern Norway and the trade in stockfish from Bergen made Borgun less central In addition, there was a trade political development that was less than ideal for Borgun And especially that with the introduction of the merchants From the Hansartic trade Hansartic merchants and this combined with a weakening king From the 1200s the Hansartic merchants Based in Bergen became increasingly important in the trade along the Norwegian coast And within this context we must see the law amendment of 1384 which I briefly mentioned before The letter was written in Bergen during a period when the merchants from Bergen Are being pushed out of the importing fishing trade with northern Norway And the amendment divides Norway into economic spheres each sphere with their own marketplace And this must be seen as an attempt from the king and of course the Merchants or Norwegian merchants to prevent fishermen from northern Norway from sailing to bergen And trading directly with the Hansartic merchants at Bergen I have actually modernized this amendment so you can better understand it This is so sad But this amendment is of course more or less wishful thinking from the king For most fishermen it seems that trade with the Hansartic in Bergen was beneficial This led to the Hansartic traders quickly creating ties of dependence to Norwegian traders and fishermen And along with the general economic downturn This led to places such as Bergen Lost this economic position and with that much of its political significance So to sum up The failed towns they mirror in many ways the socio-economic development from the Viking Age and the high middle ages Places such as Kaupanger and Bergen Had an important economic role in the regional surplus production Kaupanger connected western Norway to the resources of the inland such as iron or hunting products But when these local resources Much lost their significance and the regional surplus production decreases Kaupanger loses its basis of existence At Borgun it is especially the politics of trade that affects the marketplace The Hansartic become an important factor and the fishermen from Norway and the Hansartic merchants moves outside Borgun and directly to Bergen Nevertheless the decline of Borgun and Kaupanger coincides with the general economic downturn in europe And the smaller marketplaces are not robust enough and are not able to adapt to this downturn And go south of use So in other words, we can say they failed Thank you