The name originates from the Middle Ages, and the Vågast Course was central as an economic, political and cultural link between Northern Norway and Southern Norway.
The Vågast course was held in Vågan (Vågar) every year from early summer onwards in connection with the fishermen who had been involved in the Lofoten fishery in the winter, returning to take the stockfish down from the racks and sell it.
Here they met, both northerners, southerners and foreigners – the king’s men, northern Norwegian magnates, church men and others who wanted to be where it happened, not least merchants from Bergen and Trondheim who came to buy the fish and to sell goods that were not so easy to get hold of here in the north. In this way, Vågastemnet and Vågan became the meeting place between Northern Norway and the rest of Norway and the rest of the world.
Since time immemorial, the cod has sought out Lofoten to spawn, and the cod has always been an important resource for the coastal population. What made the Lofoten fishery so important over time was the production of winter-dried cod. The Lofoten fishing takes place at a time of year that is very suitable for hanging fish. This stockfish was needed in the Catholic countries of Europe during Lent. Then they were not allowed to eat meat, they were only allowed to eat so-called white food.
This circumstance, in addition to strong urbanization in Europe, made the Lofoten fishery economically interesting for the Norwegian monarchy, and the Lofoten fishery as a commercial fishery began just after the year 1000. Thus, stockfish became the first Norwegian export commodity of significance. According to historians, stockfish from Northern Norway accounted for 80% of total Norwegian exports in the 1300s.
The daring course was divided into three parts
The medieval centre Vågan emerged in the transition between the Viking Age and the Middle Ages.
In Snorri’s royal sagas we can read about Asbjørn Selsbane from Trondenes who was killed on his way home from Vågastemnet in 1024.
An Icelandic family saga, Grette’s Saga, tells of the Icelander Grette Asmundsson who was on the Vågast course in both 1012 and 1013.
In Olav Tryggvason’s saga, the Viking chieftain Tore Hjort from Vågan is mentioned. According to the saga, he was killed by King Olav Tryggvason himself in the year 999. Tore Hjort probably lived on Gimsøya, but Vågan and Gimsøy probably belonged together in the transition between the Viking Age and the Middle Ages. Tore Hjort’s death in 999 meant the end of the old chieftain’s families in our area. Around the same time, the Lofoten fishery, or Vågafisket as it was then called, began to gain importance as a commercial fishery. The king wanted to have control over the fish-rich areas in Lofoten, and in order to distance himself from the chieftainship, the king placed the centre in Vågan.
But the Vågast topic was not just a trade topic. The royal power also wanted to take advantage of the fact that so many people were gathered in Vågan, and a thing was established. The thing site was located on Brurberget close to Storvågan. At the thing, disagreements were settled, and here sentences were handed down for both large and small offences. The most famous thing in Vågan was held at Brurberget in 1282. Then the so-called Vågaboka, which was a separate law book for Vågan, was repealed. It was only the king’s own law that was now to apply in the country.
In 1321, Archbishop Eiliv was in Vågan and instituted an annual North Norwegian priesthood. Here it was decided that all the churches in Northern Norway and the Archbishopric in Nidaros should be present at the summer festival in Vågan. The background for this seminary was that all the churches in Northern Norway were to pay 40 fish each to Nidaros Cathedral. And the payment was to be made “at sumarstempno in Vaghom” every year.
Vågan and the struggle for royal power
Several times we see that Vågan also played an important role in the struggle for royal power.
In the Middle Ages, it was not always easy to know who would be king.
There could be several people who claimed the royal power, and this could lead to strife.
In 1027, King Olav the Holy ordered that war should be prepared along the entire coast to meet the battle against the Danish king Canute the Mighty. Olav sent Finn Arnesson to Northern Norway to arrange for the army up here, and he gathered all the northern Norwegian magnates to a meeting in Vågan. Tore Hund from Bjarkøy also came here, and a power struggle unfolded between Finn Arnesson and Tore Hund.
Tore Hund
Finn Arnesson had a “husting” blown for the entire leidang army.
It was Tore Hund who was to answer for the crimes he had committed on his trip to Bjarmeland (northern Russia).
Thore had killed the king’s man Karle and taken a gold neck ring from the dead.
Finn now demanded this necklace back, at the same time as he believed that Tore had to pay a fine for killing one of the king’s men.
Tore paid the fine, but he had cheated away most of the valuable cargo of skins he had brought from Bjarmeland, thus he got away cheaply.
Tore had a double bottom in the barrels, and at the top he had some beer.
When Finn Arnesson looked in the barrels, he only saw beer, but what he didn’t know was that most of the barrels were filled with the most expensive skins that Tore afterwards sailed to England and sold.
King Øystein in Vågan
In Kabelvåg there is a statue of King Øystein Magnusson.
There are several different saga texts that tell that Øystein was in Vågan and had a church built, while his brother, Sigurd Jorsalfarer, was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
King Øystein probably came to Vågan when the place was already of great importance to the royal power, and he came here to strengthen his position in the north.
In one of the saga texts it is written that Øystein also had fisherman’s cabins built for the fishermen. And that is why the statue of King Øystein was put up in Kabelvåg, to honour King Øystein as the first to try to make conditions better for the fishermen. The king thus also contributed to more fishermen participating in the winter fishing of cod from an area he himself controlled.
After the death of the royal brothers Øystein and Sigurd, it was a troubled time with much strife. Norway entered a civil war that lasted for a hundred years. Two of those who fought for royal power, Sigurd Slembe and Magnus Blinde, stayed north in the winter of 1138-39. In the spring of 1139 they came to Vågan. The only thing that is mentioned about the visit to Vågan is that they killed Svein the priest and his two sons.
At the end of the civil war period, in 1224, Vågan is again in the game for the Norwegian royal power. Håkon Håkonsson fought for royal power against Inge Bårdsson and his half-brother Skule Bårdsson, or Skule jarl. In 1223, Håkon and Skule had agreed that Northern Norway should be part of Skule’s region. At the summer festival in Vågan in 1224, Earl Skule came to look after his interests in Northern Norway. Also on this occasion one of the king’s men was killed in Vågan, and a thing was called. And once again, we see that many of Norway’s most powerful men were gathered in Vågan during Vågastemnet.
Medieval letters
Another important written source from the Middle Ages is public letters, we call these letters diplomas.
More than half of the diplomas written in Northern Norway before the year 1400 were written in Vågan.
All diplomas from Vågan are written in the spring or summer, i.e. during Vågastemnet.
Several of these diplomas tell us that the archbishop of Nidaros himself was in Vågan during the Våga theme, and this confirms the strong position the Vågast theme had in the Middle Ages.
A diploma from Vågan tells of a big wedding that was held here on the old Norwegian anniversary Jakob Våthatt, 25. July 1335. It was Ingebjørg Ivarsdotter and Torleif Sigurdsson who married. The diploma deals with the dowry Ingebjørg brought with her into the marriage, and it tells us that it was rich people who got married. Nothing is said about the wedding party itself, but no one needs to doubt that it has been a big wedding. No less than four priests were present in addition to two of the richest men in Northern Norway.
People from outside were responsible for the Vågast topic
It is a bit interesting that even though Vågan was the economic, political and religious center of Northern Norway, we cannot find any physical traces of large houses from this period.
There is no stone church here as we have in many other places in the north.
Nor are there many important men we know from Vågan, and there is nothing to indicate that the Vågan priest has played any prominent role during the Våga festival.
This means that it was people from outside who were responsible for Vågastemnet.
It was the archbishop of Nidaros who held the seminar, the chief judge held the court meeting and merchants from Bergen and Trondheim held the purchase meeting.
Vågan in the Middle Ages can therefore hardly be called a traditional town, but it is quite clear that the place was an important market town and had city functions for part of the year.
Recession
Around the year 1400, Vågan disappears from the written sources.
There were probably several reasons for this.
The most important was the Black Death, the plague that ravaged all of Europe.
The merchants, such as the Våga festival, where Bergen townsmen and northern Norwegian fishermen met, were an extremely vulnerable organisation.
The reason why Vågastemnet became so important was that there were many people gathered in a small area over a short period of time.
In the years after 1350, this did not happen. The Black Death hit particularly hard both in the northern Norwegian production area, i.e. in the fishing districts, and among the townsmen who traded in Northern Norway.
But the royal power tried for the longest time to keep Vågan alive as a northern Norwegian centre. In a decree issued by King Olav Håkonsson from 1384, it is stated: “We and our council, both bishops, knights and several others, can indeed well notice that our market towns, Bergen and Trondheim and Vågan and the other small market towns, are spoiled and deserted because seafarers here with you do not sail with their trade goods to the market meetings that have been from ancient times… First, those from Finnmark and from Helgeland will sail to Vågan”. In other words, an order that northerners must shop in Vågan during the summer mood. It is further stated in the ordinance: “But our townsmen in Bergen shall sail to Vågan and hold their market meeting there”. This strengthens the theory that it was people from the outside who held the purchase subject.
But there was little point in a royal letter, as the market town of Vågan had lost its importance. This is confirmed by reading “Lofotens og Vesteraalens Beskriffuelse” from 1591 by Erik Hansen Schønnebøl, who was bailiff in Lofoten and Vesterålen. He tells about the fishing village of Voge that it used to be a market town, but that it is now just a poor fishing village with “10-12 poor polemen”.
Center Shift
After the Black Death, Vågan lost its position as a center for northern Norway.
The place was still an important fishing village, in fact it was right up until the end of the 1800s, but beyond this, the place was not of any greater importance than elsewhere.
From the mid-1800s onwards, it is Kabelvåg that has taken over Storvågan’s dominant position.
This shift in the city centre from Storvågan and one kilometre further east to Kabelvåg has probably occurred gradually and over a long period of time.
We do not yet have an overview of the reasons why Kabelvåg is taking over as a centre.
It has been suggested that Kabelvåg had a better harbour for larger boats than Storvågan has, but this is hardly the whole explanation.
On the other hand, when it comes to the relocation of the centre from Kabelvåg to Svolvær from the end of the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s, this is solely due to the port conditions. With the motorization of the coastal fleet came larger and larger boats, and Kabelvåg did not have a port to receive these boats. Svolvær, on the other hand, had been given an excellent harbour by nature, and when the Hurtigruten started in 1893, Svolvær became a port of call. Eventually, Svolvær harbour became for almost the entire coastal fleet. This meant that all new establishments took place in Svolvær, and Kabelvåg stagnated.
By Håkon Brun
