Norway
In Norway the medieval market town (Norwegian kjøpstad from the old Norse kaupstaðr) was a town which had been granted commerce privileges by the king or other authorities. The citizens in the town had a monopoly over the purchase and sale of wares and operation of other businesses, both in the town and in the surrounding district.
Market towns were first created in Norway in the 12th century to encourage businesses to be concentrated around specific towns. Import and export was to be conducted only through market towns to allow oversight on commerce and to simplify imposition of excise taxes and customs duties. It served to encourage growth in areas which had strategic significance, providing a local economic base for construction of fortifications and population for defense of the area. It also served to restrict Hanseatic League merchants from trading in areas other than those designated.
Norway included a subordinate category to the market town, the "small seaport" (Norwegian lossested or ladested), which was a port or harbor with a monopoly to import and export goods and materials in both the port and for a surrounding outlying district. Typically these were locations for exporting timber and importing grain and goods. Local farm goods and timber sales were all required to pass through merchants at either a small seaport or a market town prior to export. This encouraged local merchants to ensure trading went through them, which was so effective in limiting unsupervised sales (smuggling) that customs revenues increased from less than 30% of the total tax revenues in 1600 to more than 50% of the total taxes by 1700.
Norwegian “market towns” died out and were replaced by free markets in the 1800s. After 1952 both the “small seaport” and the “market town” have simple town status.
Read more about this topic: Market Towns In England
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