G&B: 2015: Bergen

Geoff Brock & Bruce Gamble

Exploring Bergen, including Mount Fløyen,
plus a concert at Troldhaugen


	Friday 24th July 2015

We awoke to find ourselves in Bergen. We were docked in a familar position. In fact, it was exactly where we had first boarded this ship in July 2011 before cruising south and into the Baltic. Come to think of it, the weather was pretty much the same back then. Mild, but with rather sombre looking grey clouds.

Our guided tour began with a short coach ride to the opposite side of the bay, from where we got a better sense of the scale of the city, as well as a good view of our ship.

We thought that we might use our free afternoon to go up Mount Fløyen, via the Fløibanen funicular, which we could see across the bay from where we were standing.

After the stop, we got back on the coach and were driven to Troldhaugen, a few kilometres outside the city.

Troldhaugen, now a museum, was the home of Nina and Edvard Grieg.

The Villa was built in 1885 and the couple lived there for the last 22 summers of Edvard Grieg’s life.

Very close to the villa is the Troldsalen, a small concert hall. The building, which has a turf roof, blends well into its surroundings and is almost invisible to visitors who cross the little bridge to Troldhaugen. The composer's hut is situated a short walk below the concert hall, close to the shore of Lake Nordås.

Lake Nordås

Ingebrigt Vik's 1917 bronze statue of Edvard Grieg, which is life-size (1.52m).

A good likeness, Phil!

Inside the concert hall (Troldsalen). Floor-to-ceiling windows behind the stage provide a lovely view of the composer's hut and Lake Nordås beyond.

We were treated to a very special performance of Grieg's work, by an excellent pianist.

When we came out of the hall after the concert, it had started to rain...

...and by the time we had driven back into town for the next stop on our tour at Bryggen, it was raining very hard indeed!

Undaunted by the weather, we wandered about and listened as our guide explained that Bryggen (the Wharf) is a series of Hanseatic commercial buildings lining the eastern side of the fjord in Bergen and since 1979 has been on the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage sites.

Our ship was docked a reasonably short distance from Bryggen, so we decided to walk back there for lunch.

We were hoping that the rain would stop before too long, so that we could go out later and explore the city independently.

We struck it lucky. The rain stopped and we spent the rest of the day happily exploring the city on our own.

A sculpture by Arne Maeland dubbed “The Homeless”; apparently it has no formal name. I tried to find out a bit more about it, but all I got was that "it is there to make people think and reflect". The inscription, which possibly loses something in the translation is "No one is just what you see".