TOWNS OF NORWAY
We bookended our Hurtigruten tour with stays in Bergen, Trondheim and Oslo.
The contrast between the grey, cool, rainy village of Bergen and the hot, intense, urban sprawl of Bucharest couldn’t have been stronger. Even though Bergen is clearly a tourist town and the streets were filled with different languages, there was a sense of peace compared to Bucharest. I suspect this might have been just in my mind but somehow there’s more violence embedded in the cobblestones of the east than the north. It turns out that the was 20th century violence in the north with villages burnt by the Germans during World War 2 but the communities were moved away rather than murdered. There is some evidence that the effects of violence can be generational, the experienced carnage absorbed at a cellular level, to be passed down from parent to child. And that’s what I felt in the east compared to the north.
We had a few days in Bergen, a charming town on the North Sea, before joining the Hurtigruten cruise. We stayed at a hotel that not only provided breakfast but also afternoon tea and more surprisingly, dinner as part of the room rate. Soups and salad and bread and then one course a night. We took up the rather brown option on our first night - meat patty, onions and boiled potatoes - but I couldn’t come at hash and beetroot served with Worcestershire sauce on the next night.
To explore Bergen one can wander the historic Bryggen area, head skywards on a funicular or a cable car, or use their good public transport system to get to a surprising number of museums and galleries. We tried to do all of it.
Bergen is Norway’s second biggest city but it’s still small with a population of 300,000. It’s a useful reminder that Norway itself has about the same total population as Sydney. Bergen was and still is an important harbour and for those of you who remember some European history, it was the home of the German Hanseatic league of traders for 400 years from 14th to the 18th century. Along the waterfront are colourful three-story warehouses. Not necessarily original these days but rebuilt after every major fire. They have been well preserved and now serve as home for craftspeople and artisans. Given all those fires, there is still an impressive number of wooden homes including, a fifteen-minute drive from the city, the summer home of composer Edvard Greig. It was built without running water or electricity because he considered these benefits of civilisation too noisy! We had the privilege of listening to a young pianist play Greig’s Holberg Suite, a piece I’d never heard, in a small charming blonde wood recital hall on site which looks out over a fjord and Greig’s composing cottage.
Although I’m not a great one for heights, I have got better at adventuring onto mechanical structures that take you up to the clouds but I confess I’m rather glad I did the Bergen funicular before the Lisbon one crashed. I remember looking at it when Susan and I were in Portugal a few years ago and thinking that it seemed too rickety for my taste. However, that may just be a bit of questionable hindsight.
Travelling in Norway is not cheap. A delicious kanelknute, for example - a cinnamon bun - cost $9 and a glass of wine usually more than $20. But what made it worse for me is that I found a locally produced cardigan which I’ll paying off for years to come and that I will probably never get to wear given Perth’s climate. It was made in a factory just outside Bergen in a building from 1856 which housed the first textile mill in West Norway. Can you see what I’m doing here? Trying to justify my ridiculous purchase through reference to history and support of local makers.
The other thing I need to note about Bergen is that it rained every day. This made exploration on wet slippery ancient cobblestones a challenge with my dodgy foot but I survived without any catastrophes. There’s an old Norwegian saying which says, “there is no bad weather, only bad clothes” and luckily Susan and I had packed the right gear. Almost every photo has me in my loud aqua raincoat. Bergen is located between seven mountains which means that it rains over 220 days a year.
We boarded our Hurtigruten Coast Express ship in Bergen and as you know the cruise story already, I’ll pick up from where we departed the ship, in Trondheim. We’d already spent a few hours there on the trip north but it was hard to get a sense of the city, Norway’s third biggest, because it was full of marathon runners on the day and we spent most of the time, dodging them.
We arrived on a Sunday morning which never augurs well in a Norwegian town when it comes to shops but it’s a great day to arrive for museums and art galleries. Trondheim was the Viking capital and its most famous building is the Nidaros Cathedral. It was started in the 11th century over the burial site of Norway’s patron saint King Olav II and there have been additions and reconstructions for the centuries that followed with the last major work finishing in 2001. Needless to say, it was a Catholic cathedral to start with and there seems to be some time when it was in disrepair because I’m sure the priests of the reformed Church of Norway weren’t that impressed by its gothic decoration. And neither it seems were members of Norway’s black metal scene in the 1990s. There was a series of arson attacks by band members on Christian Churches as well as a plan, thwarted thank goodness, to blow up the Cathedral.
I did do slightly better in my choice of cultural experiences on another day: the brilliant Ringve Music Museum. We had a tour of an historic house, filled with musical instruments of the 18th and 19th century including the piano on which the Norwegian national anthem was composed, and in each room, our guide played for us - on a harmonium, a harpsichord, a corner piano, a grand piano, a house sized organ, a barrel organ. Next was an amazing exhibition about the harp. I have never seen such a collection of instruments that reflect the principle of a freely vibrating, tensioned string. And if those two experiences weren’t enough, then there were rooms of musical instruments where it possible to both hear recordings of their sounds and, as our house guide wandered about, he’d stop and play on some of them. As he said, the best job in the world.
Some parts of Trondheim are as I imagine those northern harbour towns above the arctic circle that we visited would have been before the Germans destroyed them. Wooden buildings on pilings built over water. Wooden buildings of modest scale in winding narrow streets. Wooden buildings painted in rust red and green, grey and gold. We saw inside a couple of them in a Folk Museum where some of Trondheim’s historic buildings such as a bank and an apothecary had been relocated. I loved the description of the why the Sparebank was created:
“1. In the city of Trondheim, for the promotion of public Morality, Diligence, Social Order and Frugality, under adequate conditions of Security, a Savings bank called Trondheim Sparebank, is established.
2. By this institution, ostensibly established for the highest good of Labourers and domestic Servants, small sums of money will be accepted from persons of both Genders and such Sums will be rendered fruitful for the Owners by accrual of interest.”
I’d give them my money! And of course, we did contribute to the financial wellbeing of the town through the purchase of souvenirs and cocktails, taxi and bus fares, kanelknuter and sjokolade .
Next stop, Oslo.
We’d booked an Airbnb apartment in order to give us a break from sharing a room and it’s always rather random when it comes to choosing a location in a city you’ve never visited. In this case, we ended up in a reasonably new waterfront apartment with views over the Oslo Fjord, looking outwards the Opera House, the Munch Museum and a world of small saunas where people can dip into the fjord in between steaming themselves to death. A comfortable spot with good nearby restaurants and accessible to the old town. We only had a couple of days before heading home so we focused on some of the 50 plus museums that this city of 700,000 people has to offer. Yes, we did see one of Edvard Munch’s Scream paintings in the National Museum but we also saw an impressive exhibition of craft at the gallery which was more interesting than the Munch works. We also fitted in the Fram Museum which covers polar exploration and the extraordinary Vigeland Park with over 200 bronze, granite and iron sculptures all made by one artist. If I thought Picasso was excessive….
But the highlight of our brief stay in Oslo was seeing a production of Steven Sondheim’s A Little Night Music at the National Theatre. Of course, we don’t speak Norwegian (although Susan’s hei hei – hallo – was said with such a good accent that people usually responded to her in Norwegian) but we do know the music well. I still think the 1997 MTC production is the best I’ve seen but there were some wonderful qualities and performances in this production.
And finally, it was time to depart.
As we sat at the airport, we discussed the highlights of our six weeks in Europe. Susan captured a really interesting element that I’ve probably only touched on briefly in previous newsletters: music.
In Prague, a concert in the Spanish Synagogue
In Budapest, our personal piano experience with Mariann Marzi
In Bucharest, the George Enescu Festival at the exquisite Ateneul Roman
In Borgen, a piano recital of Edvard Greig’s work
In Tromso, a trio of musicians performing in the Cathedral
In Trondheim, all the sounds at the Ringve Music Museum and discovering the music of one of Greig’s contemporaries, composer and performer Agathe Backer Grondahl
In Oslo, A Little Night Music
All in all, a wonderful trip.
Photos:
1. View from the Bergen cable car
2. Bergen waterfront
3. Edvard Greig Museum recital hall
4. Brygge area, Bergen
5. Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim
6. Ringve Music Museum, Trondheim
7. Trondheim waterfront
8. Opera House & Munch Museum, Oslo
9. Vigeland Park, Oslo
10. A Little Night Music curtain call
.JPG)
Comments
Post a Comment