Saturday was a travel day. David dropped me at the airport at 06:30 and I flew to Stockholm, where I had a four hour layover for my flight to Bergen. Since the University bought tickets that permitted checked baggage, I opted to check my little carry-on size suitcase on wheels, which left me only a backpack and coat to deal with in the airport. I had noticed that my ticket had "fast track" stamped on it, and was looking forward to getting to take the shortcut between terminal 4 and 5, but oddly enough the flight from Luleå, which had been scheduled to land at terminal 4, actually parked at terminal 5, so I didn't have to go anywhere. Of course, when I came in there was not yet a gate assigned for my next flight, so I found a counter with room and outlets and settled into my computer for a while. When I reached a good breaking point, around the same time the airlines sent me an SMS saying that we would depart from gate 12, about an hour before my flight, I packed everything up, and stood up to go find my gate, and realised that, actually, I was already at gate 12! I just went to the loo and returned to the same gate.
When I arrived in Bergen I saw from the signs that to get to the city center I could either take the Airport bus, which would get to town in 20 minutes, but cost ~115 NOK, or I could take the light rail, which would take 45 minutes, and cost 38 NOK. Since I knew already that I would be taking the light rail on Tuesday to get to the craft's night for the
Bjørgvin Handverkslag, It seemed worth it to spend the extra time (and less money) to scout out where I would be going.
I had hoped to meet up with someone from
Bergen's Acroyoga group already on Saturday afternoon, but the last post anyone there had made in reply to my query was "it looks like it might be raining on Saturday, we should wait and see". Of course, when I arrived it wasn't raining, so I posted an "it isn't raining now, want to meet up?", but got a "sorry, busy now, how about tomorrow?", to which I replied "ok, if it is early morning, as I am meeting a friend at 10:00 to go to museums". She relied with a yes, and we agreed to meet at 07:40 in my hotel lobby.
So instead I went to the gym that the hotel has an agreement with and did a short workout, followed by my yoga, since my room is a bit small for yoga, and has only a hard floor. While I was doing yoga a young man came in to take some selfies in the mirror and do a bit of stretching, so I did a quick roll against my shyness check, and got a high enough number to ask him if he by any chance does acroyoga? Would he like to try? He gamely tried balancing me on his feet in the basic bird/airplane pose, but didn't get the hang of it enough to let go of hands, and couldn't be talked into trying the flying himself. He then gave the excuse of being tired and thinking he is just going to go home instead of working out, so I thanked him and returned to my room. But I am feeling quite proud of myself that I was able to approach a random stranger.
I wound up going to bed just after 21:00, and slept for 8.5 hours. After tidying up my room I went down to breakfast (which, on weekends isn't served till 07:00), and then settled in the lobby with some sewing to await the acroyoga person. After a good bit of time she was late enough that I turned on internet on my phone, to read a message from her that she wasn't going to make it after all as she needed more sleep. So I went back to the gym on my own and did a bit of a workout.
After my workout I walked over to the
Bryggens Museum, where I met
Espen the historical re-enactor. We went through all of the displays together, and he was able to explain them all to me (in Norwegian!) and tell me details that I might have learned from the text that will be set up next to the displays, when they are finished setting up the new exhibition. However, I suspect that many of the details that he gave me won't make it to the text they wind up displaying.
He tells me that their last display was an old fashioned one, in the style used since the 1940's, but the new display is totally modern. The museum mostly contains things found in excavations from Bryggen--one of the oldest parts of the city of Bergen. One of the things they have on display, up against a wall, is a large timber from the base of a ship. On the wall behind the timber they have a projection, which shows the framework of a ship, which then rotates and moves forward, with the front bits vanishing as they come forward, till one feels that one is standing in the middle of the ship, and can clearly see where the timber came from, since the rest of the ship is being projected, in white outline, around it, perfectly to scale.
Another display they have is a 3-D sculpture of the topography of the Bergen city center area, onto which they project the history of the town, starting with the buildings that were there in the early middle ages, and then gradually more and more, and, as the film progresses, each time there is a major fire destroying part of the town, one sees it start and spread and die out, with the year written next to it in the water. Major fires happened roughly once a generation. Near as I can figure watching those numbers scroll past, the tiny children who managed to survive the fire (probably with PTSD) could well have been alive for the next, and I can't help but wonder what percentage of those who survived one also managed to survive the next? The film ends with a modern, GoogleMaps view of the city. I really love living in the future. It is one thing to read things like
Gitte Hansen's PhD thesis on the emergence of Bergen as a town in the early middle ages, and quite another to actually see it unfold from a bird's eye view. If you get a chance to visit Bergen make time to see this museum!
However, the highlight from that museum I was really looking forward to seeing was
the 12th Century shoe embroidered with runes, in Latin, that say "love conquers all", which shoe is part of the reason I am in Bergen at all just now. I first heard of it years ago when someone sent me a pdf of this article:
Hansen, G. 2015. Luxury for everyone? – Embroideries on Leather Shoes and the Consumption of Silk Yarn in 11th-13th Century Northern Europe. In: Jahnke, Carsten and Huang, Angela /Eds.), Textiles and Economy. Ancient Textiles Series. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 86-103.*
I was so enamoured at the thought of a shoe with Latin Runes on it, especially with that slogan, that I emailed the Bergen University museum asking for a better quality photo than the bad photocopy pdf I had. They were kind enough to send me a good quality image, and suggested that I contact the author for more information. I did, and Gitte was kind enough to send me this article:
Arne J. Larsen 1992, Footwear from the Gullskoen area of Bryggen. V 4 of The Bryggen Papers Main Series, Scandinavian University Press. Oslo. ISBN 82-00-21533-4
and an introduction to Espen (see above), who has done
who has done his own reconstruction of the shoes and sent me lots more useful information. The shoe sitting there on its glass shelf looks exactly like the photo, but it is 1000 times cooler to look at it in person than see a photo, and delightful that one can look up at the bottom side of it, too. There are also other shoes, some far more elaborately decorated, in the next display case. I need more pretty shoes to wear with my medieval costumes!
From that museum we went over to
The Rosenkrantz Tower, where I enjoyed going up and down narrow stairways and spiral stair ways, admiring the various types of stone used, and hearing all sorts of details about the building construction and history, and about the Kings and other important people who have lived there.
Then we went across the way to
Hakkon's Hall, a site where I really and truly want to see a Coronation feast event--
it would be perfect for it! Of course, I have no idea if there are kitchens anywhere nearby where one could cook such a feast, but oh what a hall to eat and dance in!
After that we wandered through the Bryggen area--the old wooden Hanseatic trading center of Bergen. While none of the buildings there now dates back to the middle ages, Espen assures me that every time the area was destroyed by fire they rebuilt in the exact same spots, and probably in the same style as what they were replacing.
Then we took a break to enjoy coffee (him) and water (me) and some yummy pastries at a cafe before hopping in his car and heading to his museum,
Hordamuseet. Oh, what a beautiful place! The cute grass-roofed houses in their main web page are orginal farmhouses from the site, and only a tiny portion of the museum. On the site they also have some modern museum buildings, one of which house displays of old boats, another of traditional household objects and tools from farming and fishing, etc. They also have a site of Norway's biggest long house for storing a long ship, that dates back to the Iron Age (before the Viking period), which was excavated in the 1970's. Even today one can clearly see where the building used to stand. The water is a couple of meters lower today than it would have been back then, so it is clear why the house eventually went into disuse as a ship storing place, when it was clearly used for hundreds of years.
I enjoyed the whole day, but I think I fell in love with his museum, and would happily live there (not that living there is an option for anyone, but still!)
I have often commented on how hard it is to become fluent in Swedish living in Sweden, as so many people there
want to practice their English with me (and often are so good at it that it is easy to forget that it isn't their native language). If I move to Norway I don't think I will have that problem. Espen spoke only Norwegian to me the whole day. The Bergen dialect is enough different from the rest of Norwegian, and Norwegian is enough different from Swedish, that I had to really concentrate hard to understand him, and occasionally I needed him to repeat himself, and, no doubt, I missed a few details here and there, but there were not more than four times all day where he used two or three English words to clarify things when I was really confused, and then he switched straight back to Norwegian.
After this amazing day I am even more interested in getting
that job for which I will be interviewing, with Gitte (see above!) tomorrow.
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