Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 18

By Kim Andersen

The weather-gods smiled at us today. Blue skies and mixed clouds, a brisk breeze but no rain as we headed to Haakon’s Hall and the Rosenkrantz Tower for our 10 a.m. hour-long, guided tour appointment. Before then the breakfast-gods had virtually cheered us. Nobody does buffet-breakfast like decent Norwegian hotels. Beyond numerous kinds of freshly baked breads, the hot sausages, meatballs, warm liver pate, the salmon and smoked mackerel, the marinated herring, the cheese, the cold cuts – – it feels embarrassingly crude to even mention the scrambled eggs, fried eggs topped with crispy bacon, hard and soft boiled eggs, and fried potatoes. Just load it up…

Thus weighed down we crawled to our medieval appointment in the cold and damp fortification built by Haakon Haakonson in the 1200s, expanded and turned castle by the Danish governor of Norway, Rosenkrantz, in the renaissance. Yes, the Guildenstern-sidekick from Hamlet. Julia from Bergen did a splendid job telling us about the history from fortification to regal dwelling with private chapel, guard rooms and endless narrow staircases carved in thick stone.

Then we toured Bryggen, the business center of the Hansatic League from 1360 to 1775 on our way to some serious art exposure at Bergen Kunsthall and the City Art Museums, KODE 1-2-3-4. The Kunsthall is Bergen’s venue for petit-bourgeois celebrations of contemporary abstractions. We thus hurried onwards to KODE 3’s exquisite Edvard Munch-collection along with late 19th century Romantic landscapes and interiors. KODE 4’s exhibit of portraits and medieval art from 1300-1800, and handsome selection of Cubists including Picasso also served to reconstitute our faith in mankind. Remarkable how such a relatively small town like Bergen can display such a rich, human legacy.