Norway: Day 6: Bergen

I took these pictures on our first full day in Bergen. They omit some places we visited; this blog entry is the more complete record of our activities. I built a route map for our walking path, but it's confusing because we criss-crossed ourselves so much. (The sites--well, really, the city proper--are compact.)

Di Yin also took pictures. The link goes to the first picture she took this day. When you a hit a picture with the caption "We took a furnicular [sic] to see a view of all of Bergen" (picture #258), you're done with the pictures for the day. The remaining pictures are from the following day's activities; I'll link to them in the next post.

First thing in the morning, we walked through the Bryggen area of Bergen. It's the area where German merchants settled in the middle of the last millennium. It's pretty, with cozy narrow streets. Quaint. It's composed predominately of wooden buildings (mostly timber-clad houses), which is surprising given Bergen's history of fires.

From Bryggen, we walked across town to University of Bergen's campus. There, we first visited the Bergens Sjøfartsmuseum (Bergen Maritime Museum). We didn't intend to go in, but we paid for the tickets before I realized it wasn't the museum we wanted. The museum traces the history of Norwegian seafaring from 350 to the present day. It was an okay museum, and we ended up spending 45 minutes there. It has many model ships. I liked the small wing of the museum that displayed detailed history about the submarine branch of the Norwegian military. Though I didn't have the patience to stand and read everything, some of the history was neat.

We then went in the museum we came for: the Cultural History wing of the Bergen Museum. Its exhibits cover religion (which, due to its section on stave churches and stained glass, was more interesting than most religious displays), the history of theater in Bergen, the growth of the city, folk art, and more. Many exhibits weren't translated into English, though a few made up for it by offering paper handouts with translations. Overall, it was a decent museum; we spent just about an hour there. I learned that Saint Olaf always carried a battle-axe. (Yes, a person so much a warrior was sainted.) The museum also had exhibits on Egyptians and on American Indians, but we walked quickly through these because there's nothing special to Bergen about them.

I skipped the Natural History Museum, the other half of the Bergen Museum, because natural history museums aren't my thing. Di Yin walked quickly through it.

For lunch, we headed to Bergen's famous fish market. Though it does sell fish (fresh, fried, and cured), it also sells a lot more. In terms of other foods, we noted reindeer sausage, caviar (in both jars and tubes), fruits (mostly berries), and jams. There's also traditional street market stalls, selling things ranging from tourist kitsch (e.g., trolls) to hats, jewelry, and shirts, and even to seal rugs (fuzzy).

After lunch, we visited the Leprosy Museum. Norway was the most leper-dense region of Europe. Located in an old leper hospital, the museum was basically just posters in rooms, with effectively nothing on display. Nevertheless, the informative posters were surprisingly interesting and we ended up spending 45 minutes there. The first part of the museum covered how Danielssen and Hansen, two 19th-century Norwegian physicians, theorized and proved that leprosy was caused by a bacteria (i.e., it wasn't hereditary or social as was previously thought). The second part discussed the life of missionaries as they dealt with leprosy. The museum also showed how ethnographic and social treatises on leprosy / treatments of lepers shifted with the improved knowledge of the disease's cause.

After the museum, we randomly happened on a contemporary art gallery without anyone at the door selling tickets. Inside was an exhibit of architectural (drafting) style of drawings that were then painted between the lines.

Next, we returned to Bryggen--Bergen is a small, walkable town--for the Bryggen Museum. Bryggen, which literally means "the wharf", is the part of Bergen where the Hanseatic League merchants lived. The museum covered life in Bryggen and the occupations of the market-people. The buildings are rightly called tenements. The small permanent exhibit wasn't exciting; most text was only in Norwegian (but the museum staff handily lent us an English guide to the exhibition). There was, in contrast, an awesome temporary exhibit showcasing the game of cultural heritage Monopoly. (See the pictures.) Another temporary exhibit covered fashion and accessories from the middle ages. We spent 45 minutes in the museum, which I'd call decent overall.

Before dusk, we explored Bergenhus Fortress. The main part--the part mentioned in all guidebooks--felt more like an estate, not a fortress, though it did have walls. (It was the king's residence during the Middle Ages when Bergen was Norway's capital.) Sverresborg, the upper part of the complex (technically a different fortress), was much more defensible, more fortress-like. It's the oldest part of the complex yet is often omitted from guidebooks, which is surprising because it's the part with views.

Over the course of the day, we assembled food for dinner, which we ate in our hotel room. From the fish market, we tried whale, which was meaty (because it's a mammal?), and some smoked fish, eventually buying smoked herring. The herring, along with leftover shrimp and nectarines (both from lunch), and tasty bread and other smoked fishes (that we stole from the great buffet in Flam the previous day), made a fine Norwegian meal.