Big itinerary today with so much to see in Bergen… did I mention that I can’t believe I’m in freaking Norway! This time last month I was checking out the terracotta warriors in Xi’an, China… and this time two months ago, I was at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo… This is just such a crazy whirlwind year I’m living at the moment.
Bergen sits nestled in a gorgeous fjord and you can’t tell to look at it, but it has a population of about 270,000 people – which is about half the size of the Norwegian capital, Oslo. I was not aware that Norway only has a population of 5.5 million… Don’t ask me why, but I just assume that all countries have a larger population than Australia – and most places I go, do.
Anyway, Bergen is a city filled with the legacy of its Viking forebearers. From approximately 800AD to 1066AD, Viking traders (not raiders) travelled along the coast of Europe through the lakes of Russua, Germany and even Central Asia. This important trade led to Bergen’s rise as a successful port and it was founded by King Olav Kyrre in 1070AD. By the mid 19thC, it was the largest seaport in Scandinavia and the capital of Norway. The Viking tradition and history is evident throughout the city particularly in the old Bryggen district.
We were all prepared for wet weather today and given that Bergen has an average of 262 days of rain per annum that’s a pretty safe bet. They have a saying here, ‘there is no bad weather, only bad clothing’… But we were very lucky and had gorgeous blue skies by mid-afternoon.
Our first stop was the Gamle Bergen Museum or the open air, Old Bergen Museum. The Gamle Bergen is a reconstructed town that has been saving beautiful old Norwegian house from urbanization. The museum took the ‘peacefulness of Elsa’ estate, and built it into old Bergen of 18-19thC with around 50 traditional wooden houses making up village life from that period, all filled with objects from the city’s history. Houses were rescued from all over Norway and moved here to bring the museum/village to life
There is a dentist’s office complete with archaic torture implements, an early glassmaker’s home and studio, the original building from Bergen’s primary newspaper – theBergens Tidende – which obviously now operates out of large new premises.
There’s a quaint bakery, with a pretzel for shop sign for the illiterate (and a watch for the watchmaker, stained glass for the glassmaker etc, etc). Apparently of all these professions, being a baker was quite a wealthy occupation, even though traditional Bergen bakers only made bread, pretzels and a ‘schillings bun’ (like a cinnamon bun), and apprenticeships to become a baker was quite prized. Go figure.
There are merchants houses in the village too, in particular a textile merchants house, which of course is wealthier and more lavishly furnished… and painted white. White paint was apparently quite expensive and only the well-to-do could afford it. Red paint which is seen far more commonly in this area is dyed with animal blood and was used always to denote servants quarters. The tradition is still kept up today and people prefer to paint their ‘main’ house white and their garages, sheds or lesser houses, red. These wooden houses are highly treasured and Norwegians absolutely love wood. The ‘Norwegian Dream’ is apparently to own a traditional wooden home, with a wooden fence, painted white, and have a wooden cabin in the fjords somewhere painted red, and a wooden boat to take you back and forth to your cabin. The Bergeners still have a storing affinity with wood for building and with the water and the fjords. Naturally with so many wood houses in suc a cold climate, fire is a very real hazard and buckets of water are stored everywhere around the wooden houses… Having said that the fire stations all over Bergen are constructed of, you guessed it – wood.
The merchants, in their ostentatiously white houses to display their wealth and status, further would also burn wax candles in their parties in summer, even though this is the land of the midnight sun. Of course the more wealthy and prosperous one appeared, the more other merchants would want to do business with you – so there appears to have been a lot of brinkmanship going on in the summer party excess department.
The many streets of Gamle Bergen are cobbled to maintain the traditional building styles and the cobbled pavers are laid in opposing directions to make the steep streets less slippery for the horses. Much of Bergen is still cobbled in keeping with traditional appearances (even though motorists would prefer better surfaces) as Bergen works hard to maintains its historic appeal.
Our next stop was the Schøtstuene Museum, (and before anyone asks… No. I can’t pronounce it) which is a rebuilt medieval assembly room from the days of the Hanseatic League. In the 13thC the Hanseatic merchants lived in rows of wooden houses in the middle of Bergen plying their trades in selling flour, textiles, beer, candle wax, dried fish, cod liver oil and other goods… and each row of merchants would have an assembly house. Dried cod was the most commonly produced and traded commodity in the region – it would be cut and hung and dehydrated naturally and was widely desired all over Europe as far away as Portugal, where it would be soaked and rehydrated for soups or stews.
The League merchants would gather at the assembly house to conduct business, trade goods, dine and recreate (read: drink beer which they believed was more hygienic than the water) in the assembly houses as fires were prohibited in the row houses. Each assembly house had a manager and two very important deputies – the Wood Keeper and the Beer Keeper… the only two important things in medieval Norway apparently. The assembly house would also have a journeyman – to conduct travel between Germany/Denmark and Norway. The managers role was primarily one of record keeping to ensure transactions were recorded but also one of arbitration should disagreements arise. Furthermore his role would also include judicial duties when members of the Hanseatic League stepped out of line.
If someone in the Hanseatic committed an infringement, they world find their name added to the ‘black list’ to be dealt with at the next assembly – and to be honest, it sounds like it wouldn’t be hard to find you self in that list, as the Hanseatic League had no women – marriage wasn’t allowed, fraternizing with women wasn’t allowed and they were supposed to be celibate. So the most common way to end up on the black list was to be with a woman. Given the local red light district was directly behind the wooden row houses of the Hanseatic merchants, I imagine people ended up on the list a LOT.
Mostly people on the black list who had been caught with women were given fines or had to provide beer. If you committed the worst crime and got a woman pregnant then you’d be fined an entire barrel of beer and then the entire hall would get drunk on your dime – which sounds more like a head wetting than a punishment to me! *shrug*
The apprentices to the Hanseatic League are the ones who seemed to cop the real raw end of the stick – literally. Apprentices were regularly beaten quite brutally for even perceived misdemeanors to keep them in line. By all accounts the Handeatic merchants were quite ruthless. Apprentices were only chosen from Germany and were usually from low class families in society – because who else would send their child off to an apprenticeship in such harsh conditions. When apprentices did something wrong, they were not black listed and fined, but instead were beaten with a ‘knut’ – a whip with a large knot at the end with needles in it. Not a good life for a kid.
Sometimes cunning apprentices would attempt to make money by blackmailing the assembly manager. The manager had a white staff of office which a cunning apprentice might try to steal while the manager was drunk and would subsequently ransom it back to him before the League found out he had been careless with it. It sounds like it was a talent to figure out when the manager was drunk enough to risk stealing off with his staff.
New apprentices were routinely hazed really badly: sometimes with life threatening ‘castle’ rituals where the youth would have his hands bound, he would be beaten until nearly unconscious, then dragged through the rows, and thrown in the fjord to wake them up (often right near sewerag outlets). Obviously only the strong survived this sort of thing but it seems pointless to treat your employees like this as I’m pretty confident it hampers their ability to do their work!
The Hanseatic League left Bergen in the 17thC and the 13thC wooden row houses were taken over by Bergeners. In 1702, however an explosion in a local bakery burned down 90% of the city leaving only one of the old Hanseatic houses remaining – a solitary house built of stone which housed cod liver oil, believed too volatile to be housed in wood, which is still there today.
Bossroom – the boss isn’t who we think he is… garbage room.
In 1537 Norway became Protestant but one church, St Mary’s remained exclusively for the Hanseatic merchants who operated like an independent Catholic German state inside Norway.
After the Hanseatic merchants house we wet to Håkon Hall which was built in the 13thC to serve as royal residences for King Håkon Håkonsson. Completed in 1261 the hall was intended to celebrate Royal celebrations such as coronations and weddings. Given the Viking/Norwegians primarily built in wood, King Håkonhad sent to England for stonemasons to build his hall, and found some in Scotland instead. The Hall was eventually finished in time for his son, Magnus (known as Magnus the lawmaker for putting many laws into writing) to be married.
In 1944 a Dutch cargo ship called into Bergen for ship repairs on the opposite of the fjord from the Hall and exploded with 120 tonnes of dynamite on board. The entire bank near where the cargo ship was moored was destroyed with only a few stone buildings surviving. Håkon Hall survived but with considerable damage particularly to its timber, longship style, construction roof.
In 1905, Norway was still in an official union with Sweden and was controlled by the Swedish govt/monarchy and there was a good deal of discontent with the situation. The Swedes unsure what to do, held a referendum that returned a 98% vote against continuing the union with Sweden. Sweden promptly dissolved their ‘ownership’ because With those numbers they seriously feared revolt.
Given that Norway had always been handed around as dowry or payment between Germany, Denmark and Sweden, the Norwegians now had to decide what sort of government they wanted. Strangely they decided on a constitutional monarchy, even though there was no obvious Norwegian prince who should be Norwegian King, so they ended up asking a Danish prince to be King! I forget his name just off hand, (he was Danish so it was probably Christian), but he came to Norway, was duly coronated with a new moreNorwegian name and they’ve been a constitutional monarchy ever since.
In spite of their pride in their constitutional monarchy, the labour movements started very early in Norway due to poor working conditions. Unions are very strong and account for much of Norways prosperity ensuring equality of work, pay and conditions for men and women. Two Norwegian guides today were keen to make sure we knew this and not to have tourists leaving Norway thinking it owed its prosperity to North Sea oil. They’re very proud of their egalitarian society… Which is awesome. We should all be so lucky.
The other thing we have seen everywhere today are funny little tolls. The trolls actually come from old Swedish stories but Norway has more recently claimed the trolls for themselves. Original Swedish trolls were evil and meant as warnings to small children, but in Norway, given they’ve been adopted as a symbol of the country, they are now merely considered misunderstood and somewhat lucky.
Tomorrow – Lerwick in the Shetlands!