Kjerringøy trading post

History of the museum

The trading posts were a turning point in the history of Northern Norway. With these posts, the trade monopoly of the cities in the south was abolished, and more of the profits from the fish trade in the north remained in the region. This was important for the region's development beyond the 19th century.

Before the trading post and inn license came into effect in the 1770s, Kjerringøy had been a church site, courthouse, citizen's residence, skipper's residence and execution site for a long time. Burial mounds from the Iron Age and a medieval cemetery are located in the immediate vicinity.

The first person to obtain a trading license on Kjerringøy was Johannes S. Bernhoft in 1775. His son Adam Humbold Bernhoft ran the place after his father. The Bernhofts never managed to build the place up to become particularly important.

In 1803, Christen Sverdrup bought the trading post and built up a robust business. He built several houses, and Kjerringøy began to gain more importance. Upon his death in 1829, his eldest daughter Anna Elisabeth Ellingsen and her husband Jens Nicolai Ellingsen inherited the place. Ellingsen came from a family with many traders. His father and 6 uncles traded in fish and fish products all over northern Nordland, and the family made a strong mark. In 1849, Ellingsen died, and his widow Anna Elisabeth continued to run the business alone, until in 1859 she married her commercial agent Erasmus BK Zahl. 

Anna Elisabeth died in 1879, Zahl in 1900. All owners of the trading post after Zahl's death are descendants of Christen Sverdrup, but not in direct order of inheritance. The trading enterprise on Kjerringøy was one of the most important in the region in Zahl's time.

The facility and collection at Kjerringøy are of special character, as all the buildings and the main part of the collection of objects belong together. The collection and facility is an almost complete northern Norwegian trading post, with 15 buildings, 23 hm of archives and over 8,000 objects, most of which came with the transfer to Nordland County Museum in 1959.

The 15 buildings were listed by the Ministry of Culture and Public Education on May 30, 1942. The listing then and now included the following buildings: the main house, the restaurant building, the storeroom, the station building/new house, the cookhouse, the small boathouse, the pigsty, the bakery, the storehouse, the stables, the cellar, the forge, the large boathouse, the Rødsjåen, Grønnsjåen and Heimbrygga seahouses.

Kjerringøy is an important architectural cultural monument, and is the best-preserved facility of its type in Northern Norway. The entirety of the built environment and collection contributes greatly to the trading post's cultural heritage value.

The building history of the trading post is largely known, including through fire assessments. The main building, the wing building and the storeroom were built by Jens Nicolai Ellingsen between 1830 and 1854. Some buildings or parts of the building were built by his father-in-law Christen Sverdrup, father of Anna Elisabeth Ellingsen. This applies to Heimbrygga, the stables, the firehouse and possibly parts of the farmhouses.

The trading post buildings stand as they did in its heyday in the 19th century. The only houses on the site that were not included in the 1959 sale were those located outside the yard, along the outfield and on other islands; summer barn, new barn (Zahlfjøsen), two large boathouses, two piers and a small trandamperi. The building mass in the yard that was photographed between 1865 and 1900 is the same as is preserved today on Kjerringøy. The houses have undergone minor or major restorations to varying degrees over the years. Both exteriors and interiors are maintained according to antiquarian principles, and contain several interesting details, in addition to their greatest value, which is represented by the complete cultural environment they collectively constitute.