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HARBOUR HEIGHTS The scenic port city of Bergen drips with age-old charm. by keith mundy
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Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park.
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ho doesn’t love a beautiful harbour city? Cape Town, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong: they all have romance, with their dramatic settings and distinctive characters. Add one more you may never have heard of: Bergen, Norway’s historic city of seafaring traders, surrounded by mountains and styled “The Gateway to the Fjords.” On a long summer day, Norway’s second-biggest and most scenic city seems blessed, its historic waterfront lined with a rainbow of brightly painted wooden warehouses, with a backdrop of forested mountains rising behind, and a blond populace who look notably healthy and affluent. Not many nautical miles away, easily reached on cruise boats, are some of Europe’s greatest natural glories, the mountain-walled sea inlets, or fjords, carved into the southwestern coast of Norway. And then, offshore – invisible in Bergen but deeply reassuring to every citizen – there is the black gold, the North Sea oil that is the fount of Norway’s extraordinary modern wealth. Perched precisely two-thirds of the way from the Equator to the North Pole, Bergen is a city of white nights when the sun sets only briefly in mid-summer, of white winters with frequent snow falls, and of wet days, two out of three in fact, with the autumn months the rainiest. Still, local people claim there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. And so they make lovely woollens to wear: Norwegian pullovers and cardigans that are legendary in design and quality. With reindeers on them if you so choose. For real reindeers, you’ll have to go a lot further north than Bergen, up to Lapland and the Arctic Circle. But if you just want spectacular scenery and a fine
In the course of the 20th century, Bergen’s fishiness became challenged by a range of rival activities and today its economy includes agriculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and higher education, as well as burgeoning tourism.
old European town, Bergen’s got it. No matter how you arrive, by train or boat or plane, it’s a good idea to get an elevated perspective on this salty old city first from the top of Mt Fløyen (320m), directly above the city. Ride the Fløibanen funicular railway up to the summit and see Bergen laid out beneath you, its several harbours with their varied shipping, its clustered multicoloured houses, its deep blue bay called Bergen Fjord, the green hills and islands around about, the North Sea beyond to the west and the mountains to the east that form Norway’s backbone. From the top, well-marked hiking tracks lead over hills, through forests and past lakes – and one trail makes a delightful walk back to the city, switchbacking down to Bryggen. A Fishy Story Bryggen is the area just north of the main harbour where the city was founded, from where it later expanded to occupy the
fingers of land that point out into Bergen Fjord, climbed the hillsides around, and colonised many islands with suburban sobriety. Threaded with quaint cobblestoned streets lined with timber-clad houses, Bryggen is where the old warehouses present their bright wooden frontages – oxblood red, yellow ochre, maroon, white – to the waterfront, cheery signs of a long history. Bergen was founded in the 11th century, a remote settlement destined to grow rapidly and become Norway’s capital during the 13th century. By this time, the city states of Germany had allied into trading leagues, most powerful of which was the Hanseatic League based in Lübeck on the Baltic Sea. The sheltered harbour of Bryggen drew droves of Hanseatic traders and they established a trading post, or kontor, there around 1360. Hugely successful, the Bergen kontor became one of the league’s four main foreign facilities, with up to
2,000 mostly German resident traders whose main business was importing grain and exporting dried fish. At its zenith, the league had over 150 member cities and was northern Europe’s most powerful economic entity, its trading network stretching across the North Sea and Baltic Sea from London as far as Novgorod in Russia. For over 400 years, Bryggen was dominated by a tight-knit community of German merchants who weren’t permitted to mix with, marry or have families with local Norwegians. However, by the 16th century, competition from Dutch and English shipping companies, internal disputes and the rise of the new Atlantic trading routes sent the Hanseatic League into decline. By the early 17th century Bergen was nonetheless the trading hub of Scandinavia and Norway’s most populous city with 15,000 people. During the 17th and 18th centuries,
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Bryggen is where the old warehouses present their bright wooden frontages _ oxblood red, yellow ochre, maroon, white _ to the waterfront, cheery signs of a long history.
FACT FILE Getting there Thai Airways (with SAS) flies daily and Norwegian Air flies three times weekly from Bangkok to Oslo. Details at www.thaiairways.com and www.norwegian.com. Both offer connections to Bergen. The Bergen Line is a scenic train route from Oslo to Bergen, details at the Norwegian National Railway website www.nsb.no Stay Grand Terminus Hotel (Zander Kaaes gate 6; tel. +47 55 212500). A great railway hotel splendidly revived for the 21st century. Hanseatiske Hotel (Finnegårdsgaten 2; tel. +47 55 304800; dethanseatiskehotell.no). A pair of old merchants’ houses knocked together. 220 220
Visit Torget Fish Market (Torget; www.torgetibergen.no ; open 7am7pm June-August, 7am-4pm September-May, closed Sundays.) Hanseatic Museum & Schøtstuene (Finnegårdsgaten 1a & Øvregaten 50; www.museumvest.no . Open 9am5pm mid-May to mid-September, shorter hours rest of year). Celebrate Tall Ships Races, July 24-27, 2014; details at www.tallshipsbergen.no Bergen Food Festival, September 5-7, 2014; details at matfest.no Information A 24-hour or 48-hour Bergen Card gives free public transport and discounted entry to most attractions. Tourist Office, Strandkaien 3, tel. +47 55 552000; visitbergen.com. Open 9am-8pm, May-September.
The largest fjord in Norway, the Sognefjord
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many Hanseatic traders opted to take Norwegian nationality and join the local community. The Hanseatic kontor was closed in 1754 and replaced by a Norwegian kontor, run by Norwegians. Bergen continued as an important maritime trading centre, and only in the 1830s did the city become outdone in size by Oslo, Norway’s capital. In 1890, an American traveller, Lilian Leland, wrote of Bergen, “Everything is fishy. You eat and drink fish and smell fish and breathe fish.” In the course of the 20th century, Bergen’s fishiness became challenged by a range of rival activities and today its economy includes aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and higher education, as well as burgeoning tourism. A dynamic city of around 270,000 inhabitants, Bergen is as modern as any other sizeable Scandinavian city, with a thriving downtown of department stores, theatres and so on. But it is old Bryggen – which means “wharf” – that is still the focus for visitors. The Wharf Where It All Began Bergen’s oldest and most enchanting quarter runs along the northern shore of Vågen Harbour in long, parallel and often leaning rows of gabled buildings with stacked-stone or wooden foundations and roughplank construction. The district was rebuilt after the great fire of 1702, but the building pattern remains that of the 12th century, and 59 of the 18th-century buildings survive today. In their heyday the waterfront buildings combined business premises with living quarters and storage space. Each one had its own loading crane and a large room for meeting and eating. That atmosphere of an intimate waterfront community remains intact, even as the
creaking premises are occupied by shopkeepers, restaurateurs, designers and architects. Concentrate for a moment and you may still smell the stacks of dried cod and hear the shouts of fishermen trading their catches with hard-nosed Hanseatic merchants. Losing yourself in Bryggen is one of Bergen’s great pleasures. Wandering through the cobbled streets, one must-see is a beautiful reconstruction of a merchants’ assembly hall, called the Schotstuene. The merchants’ premises were not allowed any heating for fear of fire so they clubbed together to build a hall where they could eat, drink and be modestly merry and conduct business in convivial fashion. Even more educative on the traders’ world is the terrific Hanseatic Museum. Housed in a rough-timber building from 1704, it starkly reveals the contrast between the austere living and working conditions of Hanseatic merchant sailors and apprentices, and the lifestyle of the management. Highlights include the manager’s office, family quarters, private liquor cabinet and summer bedroom; the apprentices’ quarters, where beds were shared by two men; the fish storage room, which pressed and processed over 450,000 kilograms of fish a month; and the fish press which squeezed the fish into barrels. Fish continues to be a big thing in Bergen. This is a nation which still hangs cod out to dry down by the shore on wooden racks, produces wonderful salmon – all along the coast you encounter fish farms – and has discovered at least a dozen interesting ways to pickle herring. Bergen’s 300-year-old fish market is the place to discover the local seafood, located at the head of Vågen Harbour next to Bryggen.
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Housed in a roughtimber building from 1704, the Hanseatic Museum starkly reveals the contrast between the austere living and working conditions of Hanseatic merchant sailors and apprentices, and the lifestyle of the management.
Hanseatic Museum
Torget Fish Market is both open and covered, its stalls offering a wide selection of salmon, herring, shellfish and whale meat, mostly to cook at home, but also to eat in sandwiches and lefses (a sort of Norwegian wrap) at its many tables. A splendid place for a quick bite, the market offers everything from king crab baguettes to lobster salad with Norwegian caviar, and even good old fish and chips. Sometimes there’s reindeer and elk meat too, in case it all wasn’t Nordic enough already. The elk also appears in local clothing shops, of which Bryggen and other downtown districts have many. At Laeverkstedet on Billgarden, Ingvild Nordahl has been creating bags, jackets and accessories of soft Norwegian
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elk leather for more than 40 years in her adjoining workshop. When you see an elk head with its huge antlers mounted on a wall, you’ve found it. For Norwegian knitwear, which is a great souvenir as well as immediately wearable, Dale of Norway offers weatherproof versions that are Gore-Tex-lined and Tefloncoated. They’re pricey, but they last a lifetime, even a rainy, snowy Norwegian one.
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Further Forays A couple of trips to the outskirts reward you with cultural riches in atmospheric settings. Norway’s most distinctive form of architecture is the stave church, a stepped-roof wooden style from medieval times. Fantoft Stave Church stands in a lovely leafy setting south of Bergen. Built
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beside the waters of Sognefjord around 1150, moved to Bergen’s southern outskirts in 1883, and burned down by a Satanist heavymetal musician in 1992, the church was painstakingly reconstructed. Although not the most impressive of Norway’s stave churches – some are mind-boggling piles of multiroofed extravagance – Fantoft has great rustic charm. Edvard Grieg is Bergen’s favourite son, Norway’s greatest composer, best known for his Peer Gynt suite. Taking a light-rail service to Troldhaugen, you hop off when the train chimes a bar of his music and head up a hill to a house looking down on a sea inlet. Grieg spent his summers in this beautiful villa, and it has been preserved exactly as it was when he died in 1907, cosily filled with family photos, drawings and memorabilia. A Fantoft Stave Church
Edvard Grieg’s summer villa
winding path leads down to the hut where the composer did most of his work, where you see his Steinway grand piano. Standing at the waterside looking out at the wooded islets, you hear only the murmur of the wind through lofty pines, which must have been music to Grieg’s ears. You can’t get the essence of the Bergen region without a foray into a fjord, and there are plenty of fjord tours on offer, with the tourist office providing a full list in its “Round Trips – Fjord Tours & Excursions” brochure and doing bookings as well. If you’re really short of time, then there are simple one-hour tours of Bergen’s harbours and modest fjord. If you’ve got a half-day to spare, then take a four-hour tour to nearby Osterfjord. But you really should do at least a full-day tour to experience the majesty of a truly spectacular fjord. The “Norway in a Nutshell” tour is a great way to see far more than you thought possible in a single day. After a train-andbus trip, a ferry takes you up
the gorgeous Nærøyfjord to Flåm; from there a stunning mountain railway ride takes you to Myrdal, and another train gets you back to Bergen. You can do that tour all year round. From May to September, other trainbus-boat day tours take you to Hardangerfjord, south of Bergen, or Sognefjord to the north, which is Norway’s longest fjord at 205 kilometres, but whose best claim to fame is the exquisite drama of the branch named Nærøyfjord. What do you see in a classic fjord? You enter a sea inlet walled by steep mountainsides, clad in rich green, some higher than 1,000 metres, where on a clear day the blue skies are mirrored in profound waters with depths as great as 1,300 metres. You become heady with the grandeur of nature at its most spectacular. You reflect that Bergen may be remote, chilly and very expensive, but that the natural splendour is one hell of a compensation for those who live in this distant corner of northern Europe.
photo: ©corbis / profile
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ALTERNATIVE FJORDS Fjords are indelibly associated with Norway, but some other parts of the world have similar geography caused by glacial erosion of coastal mountains.
South Island, New Zealand On New Zealand’s South Island is a magnificent landscape which rivals that of southwest Norway. Conserved in a World Heritage Site called Fiordland National Park, it includes 14 fjords that are locally called sounds. Here waterfalls cascade hundreds of metres into dark blue waters, granite peaks tower above and ancient rainforest clings to the mountains in a landscape of primeval glory. Most spectacular and most visited is Milford Sound, which Rudyard Kipling called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Lying at the park’s northern and most accessible end, Milford Sound offers some of the world’s most staggering coastal scenery with its dramatic peaks and dark waters. The area’s frequent downpours only enhance its beauty, sending numerous waterfalls gushing down the cliffs. Doubtful Sound, three times longer and ten times larger than Milford Sound, is renowned for its wilderness and wildlife. Cruise boats ply the fjords, there are ecotours to the less accessible ones, and some can be explored by kayak.
Patagonia, Chile Chilean Patagonia glories in numerous fjords and fjord-like channels, from the Reloncaví Estuary all the way down to Cape Horn, presenting what many people consider the most dramatic and awe-inspiring of all the world’s coastlines. A mountainous area fragmented into innumerable islands, channels and inlets, this is the planet’s most varied fjord region, with immense glaciers, a wealth of birds and sea-life, and the mighty Andes dominating the horizon. The Patagonian Channels have high, abrupt shores with innumerable peaks and headlands, their bold, rugged heads possessing a gloomy grandeur. The narrow fjords penetrate deeply into the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, their water drained from glaciers of the ice-capped, storm-swept heights. An important part of the ice field is protected within national parks such as the Bernardo O’Higgins and the Torres del Paine. Some fjords and channels are important navigable routes providing access to ports like Puerto Chacabuco and Puerto Natales, and numerous cruise ships enable tourists to get to close grips with this extraordinary landscape.
British Columbia, Canada Majestic inlets of the Pacific Ocean, the great fjords of the British Columbia coast, called “sounds,” rival those of Norway in length and depth but have even higher mountain scenery with a more alpine flavour. Howe Sound is the southernmost fjord, situated immediately northwest of the city of Vancouver. Dominated by towering peaks that rise straight out of the sea, the sound is Vancouver’s playground for sailing, fishing, diving, camping and a host of other recreational activities. The fjord incorporates many islands, three of which are large and mountainous in their own right. Further north, Desolation Sound was so named by the British explorer, Captain Vancouver, since “there was not a single prospect that was pleasing to the eye.” Today’s Canadians beg to differ. Against a spectacular mountain backdrop, they find it a great place for boating of all kinds and for wildlife watching, including seals, dolphins, orcas and eagles.