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Concept
Kjøpstad
Summary
A kjøpstad (historically: kjøbstad, kjöbstad, or kaupstad) is an old Scandinavian term for a "market town" that was used in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway for several hundred years. The name comes from the kaupstaðr. Kjøpstads were places of trade and exporting materials (e.g. timber, flour, iron and other common goods). Towns were given the "dignity" or rank of being referred to as a kjøpstad when they reached a certain population and had established means of industry and other notable items such as dock yards, steam mills, iron works, churches, grammar schools. The citizens of a kjøpstad were able to buy and sell goods and conduct other economic activities.
Norway also had a subordinate category to the market town, which was the "small seaport" (ladested) or lossested. These were a port or harbour with a monopoly to import and export goods and materials in both the port and a surrounding outlying district. These places were usually subordinate to the nearest kjøpstad. Typically, these were locations for exporting timber, and importing grain and goods. Local farm goods and timber sales were all required to pass through merchants at either a small seaport (ladested) or a market town (kjøpstad) prior to export. This encouraged local merchants to ensure trading went through them, which was so effective in limiting unsupervised sales (smuggling) that customs revenues increased from less than 30% of the total tax revenues in 1600 to more than 50% of the total taxes by 1700.
Norway developed market towns at a much later period than other parts of Europe. The reasons for this late development are complex but include the sparse population, lack of urbanisation, no real manufacturing industries, and no cash economy.
The first kjøpstads date back to the 11th and 12th centuries when the King of Norway sought to centralize commerce in specific places that offered strategic significance, providing a local economic base for construction of fortifications and population for defense of the area.
Official source
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