Moosing around in Bergen's Hanseatic old town
Wednesday we ate breakfast in our little motel in Voss, packed and cleaned up, and walked across the street to the train station at the back of the hotel to catch the train, which was waiting for us. (No meddling tourists this time!)
We had a short, pleasant trip into Bergen through a moody landscape.
Bergen (pop. ~300,000) is reportedly the rainiest city in Europe. We had come prepared with rain gear, but that's no good for getting buena vistas if the clouds cover everything on the heights.
While the weather was iffy, we scoped out a couple of used-clothing stores for authentic Norwegian sweaters. Below is the famous blue stone on Kong Olav Vs Plass by Hotel Norg that Bergens use as a meeting place (it's actually a sculpture covered in Brazilian stone by artist Asbjørn Andresen).
Beginning the 1300s, Bergen was a Hanseatic city, trading dried cod with the rest of Europe. It was larger than the capital of Oslo for centuries. We wandered through the old town, with its preserved and/or reconstructed buildings and narrow wooden passageways, seeking shelter from the rain.
We walked to one end of the harbor, found a bathroom (in a submarine museum), and then made our way back for lunch. Here is the glass-enclosed, all-weather New Fish Market, but our destination was the open-air Old Fish Market nearby.
When the weather improved slightly (look: blue skies!) we hurried to join the queue at the
Fløibanen funicular up the mountain. It takes 5-8 minutes to traverse 320m above sea level.
At the top we admired the view, stopped to pet the goats, and took a short, level walk to a pond. On the way back, we detoured through the Trollskogen, a garden of carved wooden gnomes.
I spy, with my little eye, the fountain in a park from an earlier photo!
Walking back to the hotel, we stopped into a free contemporary art exhibition at the
Bergen Kunsthall that had a very large textile installation, as well as some sound pieces with headphones, and a series of blue on white prints about the interconnectedness of everything that photographed poorly behind the protective plastic but that I think would have made interesting teaching illustrations.
RE took a break for the rest of the afternoon while I took myself to the West Norway Museum of Decorative Art, also referred to as
KODE 1 (Permanenten), a more traditional art museum. I was looking for a doll exhibit that a free audioguide to the city had mentioned but was willing to see whatever arts and design objects they had.
First I learned about
Harriet Backer (1845-1932), a masterful painter of traditional Norwegian scenes known for her treatment of light. Her sister's music is also featured in "Every Atom is Color."
When I mentioned the dolls, the docents pointed me to another exhibit called
Normands Dalen, which told a fascinating history about how empires--such as Denmark-Norway in the 1700s--collect knowledge and turn it into material artefacts to solidify their power.
Postman Jørgen C. Garnaas (1723-1798) had the habit of making these little wooden dolls of different people in traditional dress from the various places he visited on his routes.
They attracted the attention of someone in the government, who ordered more durable / portable versions to be made out of ivory. Below is a sea captain looking through his telescope.
Those were turned into porcelain figurines that were painted and sold to raise money.
(The colors and patterns are not authentic.)
And THOSE were made into life-sized sandstone statues by King Frederik V and his wife Queen Juliana for a garden at Fredensborg Palace in Copenhagen that was supposed to showcase all of the different peoples and lands over which they ruled!
After all that walking and looking it was time for a short rest before we headed out to dinner. We had decided on the basement Keller (Frk. Schmidt) of
a hip new restaurant (Pingvinen) that promised to serve the same food but with fewer hassles getting a table. (It was still a hassle to have a screaming baby next to us.) I had mead and reindeer "casserole" (really a stew).
Unbelievably, the day was not over yet, because we still had an evening reservation for a wood-fired sauna right on Bergen's harbor! Hoping the water would be a little cleaner, we took public transit out of the city center to
Heit Måseskjæret. (The current homepage image is of the sauna we visited.) We joined an open sauna with an athletic couple from Texas, two young women from the UK in town for a wedding, and four Norwegian men who spoke enough English to keep the conversation going. (Dress code: bathing suit.) We got into a routine of getting hot and steamy inside, then going outside to jump into the water. Somehow, every time I was surprised at just how frigid it was! Then we rinsed the salt off in an outdoor shower and went inside again. For obvious reasons we don't have many photos of the experience, but it was awesome to look out over the harbor and watch the late-setting sun. It sprinkled a little and even hailed on us at one point. The one bottleneck at the end of the time slot in a co-ed group was drying off and changing out of our wet suits with only a single curtained stall. Nevertheless, we managed, caught the tram, and had lovely showers back at the hotel before falling into bed.
The next morning's meal was almost as important, as RE and I are both breakfast gourmands, and
the Scandic Byparken in Bergen is famous for its spread. It did not disappoint. Below is just one station of the many available; the red casserole pot has a traditional egg dish in it.
YUM! Then it was off to the airport. Unfortunately, we missed the little sign and then the airport flyer bus and had to splurge on a taxi to get us to the airport in time. She flew back to Germany, and I returned to Oslo, where I continued my touristing.
Thursday: a park and a museum in Oslo
