Historic Bergen Walking Tour

This afternoon, I went on a guided walking tour of some of historic Bergen.

I hear you; I hear you. I wish you’d lower your voice. It’s distracting. You’re saying, “But, Joel. In all due respect, that was incredibly stupid. Why didn’t you do the walking tour this morning, your first full day here? That way, a guide would give you the lay of the land before you start exploring on your own. You could have gone up Mount Fløyen this afternoon rather than this morning.”

I’m glad you feel that way because so did I. That’s why I booked the walking tour for this morning. But late yesterday afternoon I got a WhatsApp message from someone at the company that runs the tour saying that the guide leading the morning tour tested positive for COVID. They said I could get a full refund or be booked on one of the same tours that they run in the afternoon. I chose the afternoon walking tour.

(That explanation for the morning tour cancellation sounds perfectly plausible in these days of COVID, but I don’t know. Including me, there were 13 customers on the afternoon tour. I don’t think any of the others had been booked on the morning tour. Maybe the other morning customers took the refund or booked on one of the later tours in the afternoon, but I can’t help wondering if it was an invented excuse because they didn’t want to run a tour for one person.)

The Walking Tour

The walking tour meeting point was just a couple of blocks from my hotel. Magda, the guide, told us that she was originally from Poland, but has been in Bergen and leading tours for 11 years. She said she came to Norway because her husband, who’s also Polish, was deeply interested in Vikings from an early age, so he wanted to live in Norway for a while. Um, okay. It was supposed to be for only one or two years, but they’re still here.

Bergenhus Festning

Magda first took us to Bergenhus Festning, near the meeting point. In truth, she called it Bergenhus Fortress, but the sign outside said Bergenhus Festning. I was already hip to festnig being Norwegian for fortress because I saw Christiansholm Festning in Kristiansand, so she didn’t need to provide the English for my benefit, but we must think of others, mustn’t we? Plus, how was Magda to know I’d already seen a festning and knew the word?

Bergenhus Festning looks much more like a fortress than the darling little Chistiansholm Festning. Bergenhus has ramparts and imposing buildings. Its two main structures are a castle, the Norwegian Royal Castle (which looks more like a church than a castle); and a tower, the Rosenkrantz Tower. The beginnings of the fortress date from the 13th century.

UPDATE: Please see tomorrow afternoon’s post about Håkon’s Hall in Bergenhus Fortress regarding the likely need for a correction to the above paragraph.

Magda explained that Bergen was the capital of Norway for 66 years in the 13th century, so of course it needed a fortress to defend it. It remained the capital until the Duke of Oslo ascended to the throne. I suppose he didn’t want to move to Bergen or commute, so he moved the capital to Oslo. I guess that when you’re a king they let you do that sort of thing. It must be nice.

While at the fortress, Magda told us that, in the 13th century, Norway was an independent country and a northern superpower. Then the Black Death happened in the middle of the 14th. It decimated Norway, which then merged with Denmark. Norway later regained its independence for a while, up until the Napoleonic Wars. Sweden was on the winning side of that war (i.e., with France) and, to the victor, go the spoils. Sweden took over Norway as its prize. Denmark didn’t regain its independence until 1905.

The walking tour then moved on to the nearby Bryggen district.

Bryggen District

I mentioned the Bryggen district in my entry yesterday when I talked about my little walkabout after arriving here in Bergen yesterday.

I learned some information about Bryggen on the walking tour that I didn’t know yesterday, including the need for a correction to that previous post.

First the correction. Yesterday, I said that Bryggen is a cluster of colourful wooden buildings facing the harbour, two of which are incorporated into the hotel I’m staying in. I also said that just beyond Bryggen there’s a separate row of buildings with shapes similar to those in Bryggen, except they’re taller and made of brick.

The correction is that those brick buildings are also part of Bryggen. They used to be made of wood and were more like the existing wooden buildings. But the wood buildings in that section fell apart and were rebuilt in brick.

A Language Aside

Magda’s first stop in Bryggen was in front of a cafe very close to my hotel, coincidentally where I had breakfast. There, she took the opportunity to give us a little lesson about the local language, not specific to Bryggen.

She pointed to a sign out front advertising “Skillings-Bolle.” She said that skillings-bolle is the Bergen term for cinnamon roll. But there’s a different term for it everywhere else in Norway. (I forget what it is.)

But, Magda said, skilling is not pronounced the way an anglophone would naturally pronounce, but rather like “shilling.” She explained that there used to be a tradition of naming foods after what they cost and cinnamon rolls used to cost a Norwegian shilling.

Magda then went on to say that you have to be careful about how you pronounce it because the word for chicken is similar. Then she said the word for chicken.

I couldn’t hear any difference whatsoever between her two shillings. an Australian guy on the tour said he too couldn’t hear any difference.

The other participants on the walking tour just kind of shrugged. A couple of them made a valiant attempt to pronounce the cinnamon roll shilling. Magda corrected them, “No, no, no. Not shilling; shilling.”

Her two shillings still sounded identical to me, not just to each other, but to the other participants’ attempts at its pronunciation. I’m not convinced that Magda wasn’t pulling our legs.

Again coincidentally, when I was in the cafe for breakfast this morning, I had a double espresso and a cinnamon roll. But I just pointed at the roll rather than trying to pronounce the term, which is fortunate because I don’t like to embarrass myself more than two or three dozen times a day.

That’s by far the closest cafe to my hotel. My rate at the hotel doesn’t include breakfast so I’ll probably go into the cafe again while I’m here. If I do and I want a cinnamon roll, I’m still going to just point rather than asking for it verbally. Chicken for breakfast usually doesn’t interest me.

By the way, I looked up “skilling” and “bolle” in Google Translate. It says they are “shilling” and “bun” in English.

But enough about cinnamon rolls and chicken. Back to Bryggen.

Back to Bryggen

The buildings of Bryggen, which now mostly contain shops, used to be warehouses. The most-traded good was fish; primarily cod back then. Much of the fish was salted and dried. In that form, it keeps for an exceptionally long time. It’s still prepared and sold today.

Magda pointed to the four buildings at the seaward end of Bryggen, including the two incorporated into my hotel, and asked us if we saw any difference between them and the other wooden buildings in Bryggen.

We didn’t, but after she pointed it out I couldn’t unsee it. The side walls of those four attached buildings are vertical, whereas all of the others have a slight tilt to them.

Magda explained that those four buildings had been rebuilt with brick and then a wood facade was added to make them look like the other wood Bryggen buildings. She also suspected that they were rebuilt with concrete foundations, whereas the original buildings all have wood foundations, which isn’t very good at protecting against settling in general and uneven settling, particularly because Bryggen sits on landfill.

That sort of reconstruction would probably no longer be allowed. Bryggen now has a UNESCO World Heritage designation. UNESCO insists that, to keep the designation, original materials must be used, and any alterations require UNESCO approval.

About having to use original materials, wood being wood, it requires frequent replacement. There are a couple of the buildings being repaired now.

And wood being wood, fires are a problem. According to Magda, Bergen is known as the most well-preserved wood city in the world. However, there was a time when every 30 to 50 years a major fire would destroy much of Bergen. But because other building materials used to be four times the cost of wood, people rebuilt with wood.

In its days as warehouses, Bryggen escaped most of the fires. There are no chimneys in the buildings because they left them unheated. Furthermore, candles and smoking were banned in the buildings. Today, there are restaurants in some of the buildings, which of course require stoves. But all of the interiors have been retrofitted with modern sprinkler systems. Plus, fire regulations require that good fire extinguishers be strategically placed throughout. Regular fire inspections make sure that happens.

There is a cobblestone street toward the back of Bryggen that runs much of the length of the section of wooden buildings. It wasn’t always there. Buildings used to be where the road is now. But the street was put in so fire trucks could get in.

In the back part of Bryggen, some whitewashed stone buildings have pieces of dark metal on the outside. Some of the metal pieces form straight lines others form Xs. When I saw them yesterday, I thought they were decorations. Someone on the walking tour asked about them. According to Magda, they help to reinforce the buildings. They don’t look substantial enough to provide reinforcement, but what I know about construction couldn’t fill a thimble constructed of a few molecules.

Close to Bryggen, Magda took us by a nice-looking church that still has a Catholic name, St. Mary, despite having been protestant for a long time. I may duck in there over the next couple of days. It’s a noted sight in my guidebooks.

The Walking Tour Goes off the Beaten Track

Magda then herded the walking tour to what she referred to as being off the beaten track, which was a residential neighbourhood.

The streets are cobblestone. Single streets often widen and narrow along their lengths. Modern garbage trucks can’t get through the neighbourhoods. Residents in those sections have to lug their bins on garbage day to somewhere the truck can get to. Today was garbage day.

Most of the homes in this district are wood and painted white. Magda explained that white used to be considered the colour of the rich because it was the most expensive pigment to make. Some people used to paint the front of their homes white, but they’d paint the sides that people couldn’t see a different colour.

Not all of the homes in this area are wood. Because of fires, there’s now a city regulation that no new homes can be built of wood in central Bergen. Some people build homes with different materials but then put on a wood facade to fit in.

Trades District

The walking tour ended in a district that used to be dedicated to the trades. One street was the shoemakers’ street. Another is the yarn street, although I’m not sure if that’s because that’s what it was or because there are a lot of yarn shops there now. Magda ended by showing us the former financial district. One building there used to be a large bank. Another was the stock exchange. Both are now hotels.

My Wandering

After the walking tour ended, I went on a bit of a wander of my own. I walked through the district on the other side of the harbour from Bryggen. Yesterday, I said that that side of the harbour didn’t look very interesting from the Bryggen side.

I haven’t changed my mind about the harbourside there. But the district behind it has some interesting buildings; a large, well-used public square with a large fountain with a statue; an old art nouveau-style theatre with lovely gardens on two sides, and a linear park with squares of grass running up the middle and flower beds with red roses along the two sides.

I still have a few days here, but so far I’m very much enjoying Bergen. The weather is forecast to turn nasty again tomorrow. That might colour my opinion of Bergen. The couple of days after that are supposed to have a mix of rain, clouds and sun. We’ll see what happens.