The towns.

In the mid-fourteenth century, when the Black Death reached Scandinavia, there were about a hundred towns in the region. They varied greatly in size and importance, and were unevenly distributed. Denmark was the most densely urbanised with some sixty towns scattered all over the realm; almost all of them were (or had once been) accessible by sea. Norway only had about a dozen towns, all but one (Hamar) situated on the coast. In Sweden, including the Finnish part of the kingdom, there were almost thirty towns, most of them – and the most vigorous – along the Baltic coast and in the Lake Mälaren region. There were no towns in Iceland and the northern parts of Norway and Sweden. The only possible exception was the important trading place of Vågan in the Lofoten Islands whose urban status is a matter of debate (see Chapter 11). In the early fourteenth century there was, therefore, a relatively dense pattern of towns in the southern part of Scandinavia, which were concentrated in the coastal areas and linked by the traditional sailing-routes. This pattern was to determine the urban system of Scandinavia for the rest of the Middle Ages (and long afterwards). The few new towns established between 1350 and 1520 were complementary and generally unimportant. No new Danish towns were founded or granted privileges in the second half of the fourteenth century but in the fifteenth century Denmark saw almost thirty new foundations, many more than in the other kingdoms. However, with one exception, Landskrona in Skåne, they were of little importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]