IN THE SUMMER of 1349 a merchant ship arrived from England, entered Bergen harbour and began to discharge her goods. The crew was already mortally ill and the people ashore who made contact immediately caught the disease. The ship soon sank in the harbour with the dead sailors on board. The Black Death, the bubonic plague which had been spreading through Europe over the past three years had finally come to Norway. Other epidemics followed and between half and two thirds of our population perished. Of the three hundred priests in Nidaros Cathedral only forty survived. No divine protection. It took nearly three hundred years before the population had reached the same level as it had been before the Black Death. The country faced economic and political decline and national humiliation. Perhaps the downward trend had started with the loss of the Hebrides and Isle of Man to the King of Scotland and when the male royal line died out, not even an illegitimate candidate reported for royal duty. It seemed that no one wanted to be King of Norway. Now, how humiliating and demoralizing was that? The dramatic fall in population had a fundamental effect on economic activity, industry, farming and trade. Villages and towns were deserted, the state and the church lacked income, the church lost its influence and moral guidance. Almost as a warning it seemed, Nidaros Cathedral, the largest in the Nordic countries and just completed, was destroyed by a fire in 1328. The system of defence lacked tax income and resources and the proud ships rotted in boathouses. The saga tradition had gone and only a few mundane letters have survived from these times. No literary work remains.

After the male line of Harald Hårfagre died out in 1319 Norway obtained a common king with Sweden, Magnus Eriksson, until 1355. One of his sons was elected King of Norway as Håkon VI. Norway was united with Denmark in 1380 and Sweden became part of this union nine years later. After the death of King Olav II of Denmark (listed IV of Norway) the King's Mother, Margrete of Denmark, held the reins and she succeeded in making a distant German relative, Erik of Pommern, the new heir and king of the three Scandinavian countries.