Day in Bergen

We started off the morning with a tour with a little history of the city of Bergen. Bergen is an important seaport dating back to Hanseactic times when Bergen had exclusive trading rights for northern Norway. Today Bergen has one of the largest shipping industries in the world and is a research center for sub sea oil drilling in the North Sea. Our tour guide boasted the minimum wage in Bergen is around $21 US dollars but a hamburger is about $25 US dollars so in perspective it isn't that good! It rains around 250 days per year here. We have seen everthing from mist to heavy rain to sunshine to very high winds today and it's only 5:43. Speaking of the time....it is very difficult to tell what time it is without a watch. Bascially there is 23 hours of gray skies about about 1 hour of twlight, which I witnessed around 1:30 a.m. during my restless first night of sleep. 

Our first stop today was at Edvard Greig's house. Greig was a highly popular Romantic era composer from Bergen. His house sits at the top of a bluff overlooking a beautiful Bay area. He shared this house with his wife Nina, whose family was not happy about her marrige to Edvard. They thought he did nothing but write music that no one listened to. As Greig's music became more popular he and Nina, an accomplished soprano, toured all of Europe giving concerts. His music weaves in Norwegian folk tunes with more traditional classical styles. At the hight of his popularity he was offered $20,000 to tour the U.S. but turned it down due to his tendancy toward sea sickness. The U.S. settled for Strauss but only paid him $6,000. 

Edvard Greig

View Edvard had for composing his works...

We then visited the Fantoft Stave Church, which was orginally built in the old style of complete wood with no nails. Sadly the church was burned in June of 1993 by the leader of a satanic cult. He was charged with the crime but sadly never served any time. Stave churches used to be very common in Norway but their style is extremly small. There was a law passed that a third of the congregation had to be able to fit inside of any church built therefore most stave churches have been destroyed. As such, the owner of the Fantoft church felt it was important to rebuild the church in the same old methods to preserve a piece of the past.

Interior of church 

We ended our tour in the Bergen harbor which is a very picturesque fishing village. Along one side of the harbor are a few preserved buildings of the old orignial city of Bryggen. Disney copied this idea for the city of Arendelle in the movie Frozen. One last interesting fact we learned from our tour guide was that in the Middle Ages there was one pub for every 12 people in Bergen. I certainly hope the alcohol was cheapter then because a pint of beer today costs around $20!!

Old village 

We were able to enjoy an amazing lunch of fresh mussels, shrimp, salmon, scallops, and whitefish for lunch at the Fish Market, located on the harbor. It was all very good but the salmon was unlike any I have ever had before! Amazing!!

Mussels 

Seafood kabob 

We are catching a break now before enjoying a meal on the hotel terrace of items purchased at the local grocery store. Did I mentioned this place is expensive???