Saga - 2001, Blaðsíða 138

136
SIGFÚS HAUKUR ANDRÉSSON
considered worth it on these conditions. Due to constant shortage of timber in
Iceland and common exorbitant price of the scarce commodities resident
merchant imported, the Danish govemment decided in 1821 to drop these
licence fees on timber completely for an indefinite time. After this a few
Norwegian merchants, some of which had earlier been involved in the Iceland
trade before the separation of Norway from Denmark in 1814, began importing
timber with a considerable benefit to the Icelanders.
Resident merchants protested to this and thought the exclusive rights of the
Danish subjects to the Iceland trade were diminished. They also complained
bitterly about the increased competition with the merchants in Denmark and
the duchies (Schleswig-Holstein ), who sent vessels to Iceland for nonresident
trade in the summer, and demanded various further restrictions on their trade
than already had been legalized. On the other hand the latter, who as a rule had
differences with the resident merchants and their factors, requested further and
more favourable definitions of their rights than they had so far been given.
Nonresident merchants had the full support of most officials in Iceland, who
repeatedly pointed out to authorities in Copenhagen the harmful monopoly of
the resident merchants and the urgent necessity of working for increased
competition with them, both in resident and nonresident trade. This would
serve the interests of both the Icelanders and the Danish businessmen, who
wanted to enter the Iceland trade. It also was important to the trade and
navigation of the Danish subjects in general.
Early in 1834 the Danish govemmental authorities concemed had reached
the conclusion that the time had come to review and amend some provisions of
the Icelandic trade law, yet without tampering with its colonial mould. A
special committee was then set up to deal with this. According to its proposals
the decree from December, 1836, stipulated, among other things, the abolition
of the division of the trading posts in the country into so-called townships and
additional posts, yet with the exception that Reykjavík could maintain its rights
as a town without any legalized privileges in trade. Thus nonresident
merchants got rid of the obligation first to have to stop at one of the four towns
at that time before they got permission to start trading in other authorized
harbours. Moreover, they were permitted to divide the fixed four week time of
residence in each trading harbour at their own convenience in such a way that
they could sail to the same harbour and trade more than once each summer.
Furthermore, newcomers in resident trade did not any longer have to start
business in one of these towns to be permitted to establish businesses in other
trading posts, as they had been forced to do, formally at least. The resident
merchants, however, who were the owners of the former royal businesses in the
country, had been exempted from such obligations and had been able to
arrange their trade more or less at pleasure.
These were the main stipulations of the decree. They considerably reinförced
the position of nonresident merchants and newcomers in resident trade in re-
lation to the old resident merchants. Thus the Iceland trade revived at the same
time as trade and navigation in the Danish realm had come to life after the great
blows due to the participation of the Danes in the Napoleonic wars in
1807-1814.