Bergen Gateway to Norway's Fjords
Must-See Sights in Scandinavia's Beautiful City on the Water
Mar 25, 2009
Seafaring merchants built Bergen, creating an assemblage of Medieval buildings so rare that it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today Bergen is a colorful city, with bright tiles roofs, multicolored buildings and a flotilla of boats in its harbor, which locals and visitors cross on a tiny wheezing red ferry. Its summers are filled with music festivals, and a rousing brass band gives free concerts in the bandstand.
Explore Medieval Streets
The Bryggen Museum is in the Medieval section, built around the archaeological digs that uncovered much of the city's early history. A warren of passageways lead to courtyards and through a wealth of early wooden buildings, bordered on the harbor side by a row of steep-gabled warehouses and shipping offices from Bergen's days as an important Hanseatic port.
Because ships could get to England in one fourth the time it took to get overland to Oslo, Bergen was always a cosmopolitan city, influenced by its trade with the rest of Europe. Explore its early trading history in the Maritime museum, and its Hansa days in the Hanseatic Museum.
See Bergen from Above
Take the Floibanen, a tramway to the overlook high above the city, then walk down through steep narrow streets, lined by old houses. No worry about getting lost, since everything runs downhill until it empties into the harbor, always visible below.
Along the head of the harbor is a busy and colorful morning market with displays of seafood and bright lignonberries. Close to the market in one of Bergen's best preserved houses. Damsgard Have, a short bus ride from the harbor, is an early eighteenth-century villa with fine gardens restored to the style of that period.
How to Get to Bergen
Trains from Oslo to Bergen run several times a day in the summer and take seven hours to go over the mountains and along the rim of a glacier before dropping down to the western shore. The train station has a lodging service and a free bus (the red one) to the center of town. Driving from Oslo, follow much the same route, through Gielo, or veer north through Aurland.
The Hurtigruten, Norway’s Coastal Steamer leaves Bergen daily for the north, and express boats carry passengers into all the nearby fjords. Flaggruten operates sleek ferries between Bergen and Stavanger, with five stops in between, a good way to tour the coast to the south.
Touring Hardanger Fjord
Opening to the sea just south of the city and pointing its long finger northward, is the Hardanger Fjord, one of Norway's best known, and easy to tour on a day trip from Bergen. North is the Sogne Fjord, its walls often rising almost straight, which reaches nearly a third of the way into the center of Norway. These are the fjords most often seen pictured on Norway's travel posters. Ferries are the easiest way to see them – and to get the beast views. Or take the boat to the end of a fjord, then return to Bergen by train or bus.
