Kjerringøy trading post (''Kjerringøy handelssted'') is an open-air museum at

Kjerringøy Kjerringøy is a village in Bodø Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The village is located about north of the town of Bodø, along the Karlsøyfjorden, just south of the entrance to the Folda fjord. The Kjerringøy Church is located ...

Nordland Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It is operated as part of the

Nordland Museum Nordland Museum ( no, Nordlandsmuseet) is a museum located in the center of Bodø in Nordland, Norway. The museum is a central part of a larger consortium of 18 museum units in nine municipalities with the county of Nordland. Background The mus ...

of cultural history.

History

Kjerringøy trading post was established in the late 1700s. It traded over a large area, and was licensed to provide accommodation for travelers. Through the buying and selling of fish and fish products it gradually became an affluent trading post. The Kjerringøy merchants bought fish in Lofoten and elsewhere in Nordland, dried or salted the fish and sold it in

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...

and other places. The ships used to transport the goods where often single masted open cargo sailing ships, such as the '' Anna Karoline''. The ships returned with foodstuffs, fishing gear and other equipment, which they sold in their local store, or in the

Lofoten Lofoten () is an archipelago and a traditional district in the county of Nordland, Norway. Lofoten has distinctive scenery with dramatic mountains and peaks, open sea and sheltered bays, beaches and untouched lands. There are two towns, Svolv� ...

islands. The business remained quite modest until about 1820 when a boom began, led by good prices for fish. The herring fishery experienced a peak from about 1860. The merchant post's business was at the height of its prosperity around 1875, after which it slowly declined. The merchant at the time invested in mining, industry and other modern enterprises, mostly with little success.

Merchants

The first merchant of note on Kjerringøy was Christian Lorentzen Sverdrup who owned the business from 1803 until his death in 1829. He had earlier traded at Hundholmen in Bodø. It was under his ownership that the boom came to Kjerringøy. Sverdrup's daughter, Anna Elisabeth, married Jens Nicolai Ellingssen. He took over the business and invested in the fish trade with great success. Ellingsen died in 1849. His widow continued the business with increasing help from her young clerk,

Erasmus Zahl Erasmus Benedicter (Benedigt) Kjerschow (Kjerskov) Zahl (19 January 1826 – 29 April 1900) was a privileged trader and an island owner at Kjerringøy in Nordland, Norway. Zahl is known as Nobel Literature Prize laureate Knut Hamsun's monetary s ...

. They got married in 1859 and Zahl's rise coincided with Kjerringøy's heyday. Zahl amassed exceptional riches and stamped his mark on the business life of Nordland for several decades. Anna Elisabeth died in 1879, and Zahl in 1900. When he died, the Kjerringøy business and its earning power had been declining for a couple of decades, as was true for most of the other northern Norwegian merchant posts. Local merchant, farmer and politician Gerhard Kristiansen (1868-1937) took over the business and ran it from 1900 until his death in 1937. During his time, it became a purely local.

Nordland Museum

The commercial operation of Kjerringøy trading post was discontinued at the end of the 1950s and the premises were bought by Nordland Museum in 1959. There had been little or no activity there for many years and the buildings had become dilapidated. Most of the buildings at the museum now have been fully restored. Today the museum comprises 15 buildings and functions as an open-air museum. ''Kjerringøy handelssted''
visitbodo.com

References

Other sources

*Haar, Karl Erik (1986) ''Sirilund: Vandringer pa Kjerringøy gamle handelssted'' (Oslo: Cappelen)

External links

Nordland Museum official websiteKjerringøy handelssted website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kjerringoy trading post Museums with year of establishment missing Open-air museums in Norway Museums in Nordland Photography archives in Norway