Friday 23 September 2022--Nice day...supposed to be even nicer tomorrow. All I have in mind is to wander around and soak it in. Start with coffee in a café down the street. The neighborhood here on the south side of the harbor is called Strandsiden, "beachside". The beach has long been overbuilt, I guess.

I circle around to the other side and poke around Bryggen. Bryggen is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the old warehouses serving the merchants who traded (mostly fish) within the Hanseatic League. The League was, in Wikipedia's words, "a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe." The strong nation-states we are familiar with today were yet to form, and Europe was divided up into a patchwork of squabbling city-states and minor kingdoms. The League, founded in the 14th century, provided stability and security to its members. The trading settlement that would become Bergen was established in the 11th century, and archaeological evidence suggests that Bryggen was at the heart of it. However, the oldest of the buildings now standing date to 1702, replacing warehouses destroyed by fire in that year. (I gather that some are as recent as 1955, built following another fire.) The shrinking League withdrew from Bergen in 1754, and ceased operations altogether about a century later.

The old warehouses now contain restaurants, shops, and artisan workshops. Several of them are undergoing extensive rehabilitation, including the one that is completely covered. (At least they printed a picture of the façade on the front, so it isn't too ugly.) The major problem is rotting and subsidence of the wooden bulwarks which support the buildings. The warehouses would originally have been very close the water, possibly fronting on the fjord itself. There's a band of fill about 130 feet wide in front of the warehouses now, room enough for a plaza with restaurant seating, a two-lane road, a waterfront promenade, and wharf space for small vessels.

Just past Bryggen is Bergenhus Festning (fortress), the oldest parts of which date to the 13th century. The Rosenkrantz Tower and Håkonshallen served the last Norwegian kings to be based in Bergen. The buildings suffered typically ignominious reuse and neglect over the succeeding centuries, and then were badly damaged by the explosion of a munitions ship during WWII, an incident eerily similar, if somewhat smaller in scale, to the Halifax Explosion: neighborhoods flattened, hundreds killed, the ship's anchor found on a mountainside nearly two miles away. The tower and hall have since been restored, and are now managed by the Bergen City Museum. There are nice views from the fortifications atop the hill, over the harbor and Nordnes peninsula to one side, and the Skuteviken neighborhood to the other.

Down the other side of the hill, I wander into the Stølen neighborhood, and stumble onto Art Themis, a peculiar little neighborhood pub. Go in for a pint, and admire the funky decor and moody low-key music (I recognize Norah Jones, but not much else). I chat with the owner while her son mans the bar. I like it...will return, if I get a chance.

Stølen's jumble of streets and alleys leads to Fjellet, along the lower slopes of the mountain Fløyen. The switch-backing street above the Fløibanen terminal is called Vetrlidsallmenningen. Allmenningen translates as "general public"--I've seen it attached to the names of public squares and broad avenues, like the one below the terminal (of which the winding hill above is an extension). Vetrlids is something about suffering the weather. I don't understand Norwegian. I mean...there are languages I don't understand, but when I see them translated word-for-word, I laugh and think, "So that's how they say that." I have no idea what "weather sufferers the general public" is getting at, as a street name. I suppose an actual Norwegian could explain it to me better than Google does. Win and I stayed in an apartment near the top of Vetrlidsallmenningen in 2004. I find the house--it's been recently sold and is now a private home, but the "Skansen Pensjonat" plaque is still on the wall.

Below Fjellet is Vågsbunnen. Meander around a while more, then find dinner at a Mexican place. More wandering after...decide to grab a couple cans of beer at a grocery, but I'm too late--alcohol sales are cut off at 8:00. Go back to my room and watch a little television before retiring early.