A Town Shaped by Water? Water Management and the Development of Public Space in Bergen in the Early Medieval Period

In this paper I discuss urban planning and water management, primarily the development of drainage systems, based on the results of recent excavations in the Vagsbunnen area. The abundance of water from rainfall, rivers and streams was certainly a very important resource for the development of the early urban Bergen. It necessitated interventions of regulation and drainage that contributed strongly to the organisation of the Vagsbunnen area. While water management systems are previously known from the Bryggen area, recent excavations have uncovered previously unknown water management systems from the 11th century onwards in the Vagsbunnen area, suggesting that water management was a strategy right from the beginning of urban settlement. The rapid growth and expansion of the medieval town required strategies to control the water in the public spaces of the town. This led to the development of different types of water management systems, specialised for different needs. In this article, the archaeological material from previous and new excavations are studied in juxtaposition to written sources and geological data, in order to investigate the nature and development of these water management systems, and how they contributed to the urban development of the town.