ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene

The Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene are two very special buildings in the city of Bergen in Norway. They used to be part of a very important trading organization called the Hanseatic League, which existed a long time ago in the Middle Ages.

Think of the Hanseatic League as a big group of people who all worked together to trade goods, like fish, timber, and furs, with other countries around Europe. They had their own rules and ways of doing things, and they were very successful at it.

The Hanseatic Museum is a building that used to be a warehouse, where the Hanseatic merchants would store all the goods they bought and sold. It's a very old building, and when you visit it, you can see how they used to live and work there. You can see their living quarters, where they slept and cooked their meals, and also the storage rooms where they kept the goods they traded.

The Schøtstuene is another building that used to be a place where the Hanseatic merchants would meet and make important decisions together. It's basically like a really big meeting room where they would sit around a big table and talk about important stuff. The room is really special because it looks exactly the same as it did hundreds of years ago, with wooden benches and a big fireplace.

Both of these buildings are really important because they give us a glimpse into what life was like in Bergen a long time ago, and how important international trade has always been to Norway. When you visit them, it's like stepping back in time and experiencing what it was like to be part of this very important trading organization.