The Barony of Rosendal – the only barony in Norwegian history
The barony was like a state within the state. It had its own church, its own judge, its own sheriffs and its own prison.
In June, the annual summer trip to the senior university in Os goes to Rosendal and the barony there. It was therefore extra nice at the senior university on April 4 to get an introduction to the history of the origins of the barony. It was Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, professor of law and research leader at the Barony Museum in Rosendal, who gave the assembly a sparkling introduction to the practice in the 17th century in Sunnhordland in general and around Rosendal in particular.
Wrong bile
Rosendal was originally called Skålabygdo or Kyrkjebygdo, but the builder gave the town where the barony was built, the name Rosendal. Not unexpected perhaps, since he had roots from the city of Rosenthal in the Netherlands. The village itself was then named when the postal service was to have a postal address for the city.
It is easy to imagine people in the 17th century in Sunnhordland as poor farmers. Kåsøren claimed that this was a wrong picture. Many in the area had good incomes and lived a life with access to goods outside the completely needy. The reason was the abundance in Sunnhordland with a wealth of resources that both Norwegians and foreigners – not least the well-to-do – were interested in, combined with the geographical location of the area.
As long as the sea was the main traffic artery, Scotland, Shetland, Orkney Islands, the Netherlands were the “vicinity” of Sunnhordland. The connection between Sunnhordland and these countries was closer than the connection to Oslo and Copenhagen.
This connection we can see lines from the eighteenth to the Viking Age. And it is probably no coincidence that two monasteries, both of which sprang from monasteries in England; Halsnøy monastery and Lyse monastery, were just located here in the district, while most monasteries in the country were otherwise located in towns.
Trade and wealth
In a burial mound, close to where the barony lies, was found in the 1930s the so-called Hatteberg treasure – a collection of 32 objects of gold and silver, all Irish. This is a test of both trade and wealth in Sunnhordland far eighteenth in time.
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So what did the Sunnhordland area have to do with foreign collection bars? Timber is well known as a commodity. At times, the area in Hordaland was mostly deforested shallow timber that had been sent to Scotland.
More unknown is that ermine – leather of lynx – and reindeer horns, which were popular material for combs, were good and expensive commodities. Not to mention falconers. These were captured and sold for particularly high prices in neighboring countries.
Fish and oysters were also among the good commodities. And the district also baud on mineral as lime to paint stone walls with and marble, a coveted stone for building.
The richest heir
The trade led to various practices. He led to wealth – there were many nobles in the area. He also led to marriages across countries and thus people who move to Sunnhordland from countries around the North Sea and vice versa people who move the other way and settle strategically as trading partners.
All these practices were important for the placement of the barony in Rosendal, the only barony in the country.
Karen Mowat had enterprising ancestry both at home and abroad and was considered the richest heir in the country when in 1658 she married Ludvig Rosenkrantz, a poor nobleman with origins in Denmark and military education from the Netherlands. As a gift when they got married, they got the farm Hatteberg in Kvinnherad.
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Ludvig would rather go to Denmark on the eighteenth and traveled there for several years to be the king for an office there. But Karen wanted something else. She had money and she had the power to build the smallest castle in the country, a stone castle, on the property in the years 1662-67.
Scottish masons were in charge of the work, and after a few years, Dutch gardeners came to ship the garden. Ludvig finally gave up the dream of a life in Denmark, sold his property in Denmark, came home and became involved in the running of the barony and forestry.
State within the state
The barony was like a state within the state. It had its own church, its own judge, its own sheriffs and its own prison. And all state duties were performed by the baron. 230 guards lay at most inn under the barony. That is to say, the baron was not Ludvig until 1678. At that time Karen was deceased, only 45 years old, so she did not experience becoming a baroness.
Ludvig received the title of baron on the condition that only sons should inherit the title. Karen and Ludvig had sons and two daughters. Three of the sons died in the war. The youngest, Axel, inherited the barony.
But in 1680 his father had married Clara Catharina von Stockhausen, of fine German nobility. She got a particularly good marriage contract which meant that when Ludvig died in 1684, she received 90% of the income from the barony. This meant that Ludvig’s son, first Holger until Clara died in 1689, sat with 100% of the barony’s expenses and only 10% of the income. This could not go.
In 1689 the barony was bankrupt. The son Axel inherited the barony and got on well on his feet for a while, but in 1723 it did not work anymore. The time for the barons in Rosendal was over after only generations.
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Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde is still sitting around Sunnhordland and the barony in Rosendal here. But the house and garden of the barony are now a museum, and there are probably many who look forward to in June to visit the city and get a hearing both about the time when the property was barony and about what has happened to the city for centuries.
Lill-Karin Wallem
Os Senior University