Late Middle Ages · Europe · Disaster

1350

Black Death reaches Scandinavia and the Baltic

1350

Plague ships carried Yersinia pestis to Bergen, Stockholm, and the Hanseatic ports, killing perhaps half the population of Norway and devastating the thin-spread settlements of northern Europe. Entire fjord communities vanished without a single survivor. The Norwegian kingdom, already weakened by union with Sweden, never fully recovered its pre-plague population or independence.