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Jan. 18, 2008
ANITA ALAN Contributor- Carmel, CA
Part Two [Part one can be found in the January 11 issue.]
If,
as our guide, Malfrid of Bergen by Expert quipped, “it rains 360 days a year,” then
we hit one of the five lucky days of sunshine. In Bergen, a city that takes pride in and promotes
its rain, much like California’s AT&T Pepple Beach Pro-Am Golf Tournament, souvenir shops
carry popular postcards that show umbrellabearing, rain-booted locals splashing through puddles.
In fact, Bergen boasts a colorful Rain Festival for children each year with umbrellas, slickers,
and rain boots as colorful as Bergen’s own buildings. Still other cards picture some of the
passageways between Bergen buildings, spaces so narrow that “you would need to close your
umbrella” to get through them, the guide shared. For today, we had clear, cloud-dappled skies
and dry streets. If we wanted to see Bergen’s famed rain, we would need a return trip—one
we eagerly anticipated following the cruise.
We would later see Bergen’s Akvariet (Aquarium); open since 1960, and about the vintage of Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, California, once the world’s largest oceanarium. Though not new, the well-used, well-loved Akvariet still charms and informs all ages today. The penguins in particular attract visitors. According to our guide, whose wry wit was well suited to stand up comedy, “The aquarium wanted to have all local birds, but they would only fly away.” When first introduced, “the penguins were standing in the corner for weeks. I suppose they were only speaking Japanese,” she suggested.
In
1916, in high wind conditions, City Center burned, destroying 360 buildings. So as historic as
some buildings look, their rebuilding was relatively recent. Our guide also told us that in 1965,
the last streetcar went out of service. The tech museum does not have any streetcars because no
one thought at the time to save one. They “pushed them all into the fjord,” she related.
She mentioned Bergen having built a ski jump 22 meters high, but “we don’t have any
snow” (Well, not enough, anyway), making the jump a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
A shipbuilding town expects people, quite literally, to “know the ropes.” Nautical terminology gave us that and many more adages. Bergen has the remains of a ropery. This several blocks-long, ochre structure, housed in 28 contiguous buildings, still exists today. The drive by takes quite some time. Without explanation, the bewildered out-of-towner would not understand its archaic, but once essential, purpose. Bergen harbor required endless miles of rope for, until the1850’s, it served as many as 300 sailing ships. People came here from all over the world, thus many Bergen names are not of Norwegian origin.
The
Sojfartsmonumentet (Sailor’s Monument) at Torgallmenningen, the main square in Bergen’s
city center, displays four bronze relief panels, a cubeshaped monument of Norwegian seafaring history
from the Viking days to modern times. It follows that Norwegians claim several seafaring firsts:
Amunsen—first to the South Pole and to discover how deep the water was under the polar cap.
He also traversed the surface of the polar ice cap on skis. Nansen and Johansen (never given enough
credit) won the Nobel Peace Prize for work with the League of Nations, and journeyed in the Fram,
the strongest wooden ship ever built (built under Nansen’s direction), across Greenland and
through the Northwest Passage. Nansen pioneered perilous research into Arctic currents. The Fram
ultimately completed three successful voyages for Norway’s greatest polar explorers. The
third greatest Norwegian explorer was Thor Heyerdahl, 1914-2002, who drifted from South America
to the Easter Islands in a raft called Kon-Tiki to test his theory of how humans came to inhabit
the Easter Islands. His book, Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft first appeared in 1950 and
is still in print.
A seldom noted event in Bergen harbor history goes as follows: On April 20, 1944 (Hitler’s Birthday), fire aboard a munitions ship caused a blast that blew all the water out of that part of the fjord. It killed 102 people and destroyed all the harbor buildings, leaving pieces of the ship scattered across the mountains. Most notably, the ship’s anchor, half of it anyway, flew some three kilometers from the harbor, landing 400 meters (1200 feet) up Sandviksfjellet, one of Bergen’s seven mountains. Locals named the nearby 100-year-old stone cabin “Ankerhytten” (The Anchor Hut)!
Next issue, look for more about the cruise itself as we journey from Bergen to Kristiansand, our next port of call.
Photos by Anita Alan. From top to bottom: 1. Bergenhus Fortress and Rosenkrantz Tower overlook Bergen Harbor. 2. Hand-carved window on the Nordenfjeldske Dampskibsselskap shipbuilding and ship repair business. 3. Crosswalk signs show a better dressed pedestrian than the customary US bubble-head sort.
Norwegian American Weekly
