Bergen

Why this place

Bergen reaches the Ungdommene (the Youngsters) late on Day 3 and holds them for a full day before they turn inland — and that day holds the most concentrated piece of working old-Europe in Norway.

What happens here

The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) arrive by train at 10:30 PM on Day 3 after a full day moving through fjord country, and stay two nights. The hotel is the Thon Hotel Rosenkrantz, two blocks from the wharf.

Day 4 is a full day on foot:

• Bryggen — the painted wooden Hanseatic warehouses on the wharf, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979 and the oldest part of the city. Walk it before the cruise crowd arrives.
• The Fish Market (Fisketorget) on the harbor. Crab, salmon, the local fiskesuppe (creamy fish soup).
• The Fløibanen funicular climbs Mount Fløyen in seven minutes for a view of the seven mountains the city sits between.

Day 5 is the journey onward — a flight from Bergen back to Oslo and the drive north to Lillehammer.

Background

Bergen was Norway’s largest city until the 1830s and the country’s working seat of the Hanseatic League — the medieval German merchant guild that controlled North Sea trade for almost four centuries. The Bryggen wharf was their warehouse district. It has burned down at least seven times in its history, most recently in 1955, and been rebuilt each time on the same crooked footings. The result is a row of buildings tilted gently against each other in every direction.

The city sits in a famous rain-shadow of its own: it rains in Bergen on roughly 240 days of the year. The local saying is that there is no bad weather, only bad clothes.