Our adventure around Bergen begins after a restful night on the Viking Star in its home port of Bergen. The first part of this series can be found at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-658415-1.html The following is mostly from Wikipedia: Bergen is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. At the end of 2019, the municipality's population was 283,929. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway (after Oslo). The municipality covers 465 square kilometres (180 sq mi) and is on the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen. The city centre and northern neighbourhoods are on Byfjorden, 'the city fjord', and the city is surrounded by mountains; Bergen is known as the 'city of seven mountains'. Many of the extra-municipal suburbs are on islands. Bergen is the administrative centre of Vestland county.

Trading in Bergen may have started as early as the 1020s. According to tradition, the city was founded in 1070 by king Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin, 'the green meadow among the mountains'. It served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, and from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League. Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by the capital, Christiania (now known as Oslo). What remains of the quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site. The city was hit by numerous fires over the years. The Bergen School of Meteorology was developed at the Geophysical Institute starting in 1917, the Norwegian School of Economics was founded in 1936, and the University of Bergen in 1946. From 1831 to 1972, Bergen was its own county. In 1972 the municipality absorbed four surrounding municipalities and became a part of Hordaland county.

The city is an international center for aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and subsea technology, and a national centre for higher education, media, tourism and finance. Bergen Port is Norway's busiest in terms of both freight and passengers, with over 300 cruise ship calls a year bringing nearly a half a million passengers to Bergen, a number that has doubled in 10 years. Almost half of the passengers are German or British. Four large bridges connect Bergen to its suburban municipalities.

Bergen has a mild winter climate, though with a lot of precipitation. From December to March, Bergen can be, in rare cases, up to 20 °C warmer than Oslo, even though both cities are at about 60° North. The Gulf Stream keeps the sea relatively warm, considering the latitude, and the mountains protect the city from cold winds from the north, north-east and east. Average annual precipitation during 1961-90 was 2,250 mm (89 in). This is because Bergen is surrounded by mountains that cause moist North Atlantic air to undergo orographic lift, yielding abundant rainfall. Bergen is considered the rainiest city in Europe, although it is not the most precipitous "place" on the continent. Bergen's weather is much warmer than the city's latitude (60.4° N) might suggest. The average rainfall for July is about 6 inches and it averages 14.5 rainy days for the month. The average high for July is 66 degrees F. As you will see, we had better than normal weather.

The first photo was taken at 7:18 AM on our first morning in Bergen; a beautiful and peaceful morning. After breakfast, we began our day touring the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bryggen, the picturesque wharf that helped put Bergen at the center of the Hanseatic League; see the rest of the photos. Photo 6 is an homage to the stockfish.

Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called "hjell" in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage life of several years. The method is cheap and effective in suitable climates; the work can be done by the fisherman and family, and the resulting product is easily transported to market. Cod is the most common fish used in stockfish production, while other whitefish, such as pollock, haddock, ling and cusk, are used to a lesser degree.

Stockfish is Norway's longest sustained export commodity. Stockfish is first mentioned as a commodity in the 13th-century Icelandic prose work Egil's Saga, where chieftain Thorolf Kveldulfsson, in the year 875 AD, ships stockfish from Helgeland in mid-Norway to Britain. This product accounted for most of Norway's trade income from the Viking Age throughout the Medieval period. I will show photos of stockfish and their drying racks in a future photo set.

The next part will be from our visit to the Hanseatic Museum.