Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene, Historical trade museum at Bryggen, Norway
The Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene occupy an old wooden building along Bryggen, Bergen's UNESCO-listed waterfront. The museum shows original objects, reconstructed merchant quarters, and the assembly rooms known as Schøtstuene, where traders once gathered for meetings and meals.
German merchants settled at Bryggen around 1360 and ran their trading post there for over four centuries. Bergen grew into one of northern Europe's main commercial ports during that period.
The Schøtstuene were the shared gathering rooms where German merchants ate together, held meetings, and followed their own rules. Visitors today can see how these rooms were arranged and get a sense of how community life was organized among the traders.
The museum sits right on Bryggen and is easy to reach on foot from Bergen city center. Guided tours in English are available, especially in summer, and they help make sense of the layout and the objects on display.
Ruins found beneath the museum floor date from around 1280, which is earlier than the Hanseatic period itself. This means the site was already used for trade long before the German merchants arrived.
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