Timeline · The estate is broken up

The Hagerup family trades on Giske

1762 to 1831

In 1762 Nils Hagerup buys the main farm on Giske with the surrounding islets for 5000 rixdollars. From the farm he carries on trade, and his son Christopher later keeps an inn, with lodging and food for people travelling along the sailing route.

The sources disagree about the year. Lokalhistoriewiki gives 1762, and says that the commerce councillor Hans Holtermann, who owned the farm from around 1750, sold to Nils Hagerup, who is said to have been his cousin. The priest Hans Strøm still calls Holtermann the owner in the book printed in 1766. In 1797 Christopher Hagerup was the owner, according to the topographer Jens Kraft and the historian Peder Fylling.

Giske still lay on the main sailing route between Bergen and Trondheim, and trade and innkeeping were what the island had always lived from: the ships that passed. Ålesund, about six kilometres south-east of Giske, was granted rights as a ladested, a minor trading port, in 1793, and the town grew up on the islets where King Magnus Håkonsson lay with his ships in 1264.

When Christopher Hagerup died, the property was divided between the widow and the children, and the farms on the island were, according to Fylling, «udspredte og fordelt» (scattered and divided). In 1831 Christopher's son-in-law P. E. Rønneberg owned the main farm. Jens Kraft then counted 17 oppsittere, farmers, and 9 plassmenn, cottars, on Giske, with 211 people in all.

Between those two dates Norway became a kingdom of its own with its own constitution in 1814. The farms on Giske were still tenant holdings, farms the farmers rented, under the main farm.

Sources

Lokalhistoriewiki, Giskegodset; Hans Strøm, Søndmørs beskrivelse (1766), s. 110; Jens Kraft (1831), s. 121 og 124; Peder Fylling (1859, s. 82; 1883, s. 46 til 47); SNL, Ålesund; rapporten «Giskegodset etter 1582».