We began our five week exploration of Norway by spending a few days out and about in Bergen. Located in the heart of Norway’s fjord region, Bergen is a UNESCO World Heritage City, a UNESCO City of Gastronomy and a European City of Culture. Plus, good friends advised that if we were going to Norway, we should spend at least a couple of days in Norway’s second-largest city (population ~ 300,000). So we did!

We flew into Bergen on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in June, and had a rental car reservation starting Saturday morning. We knew going in that three-and-a-half days wasn’t enough time to experience everything on our list of potential sights / activities. Because Bergen is the rainiest city in Europe, we ended up having to choose between hiking and biking. The main activity we missed out on was renting bicycles to pedal a short distance along the coast to the Norway Fisheries Museum and nearby Sotrefla (aquaculture visitor center).

Buying a three-day Bergen Card gave us unlimited access to local transit, plus free or discounted admission to most of Bergen’s two dozen+ museums and other attractions. That meant we didn’t feel compelled to linger in any one place “to get our money’s worth.” And it gave us maximum flexibility to see sights outside central Bergen. Each adult pass cost NOK660 (roughly CAD90 / USD65) and we figure we came out a little ahead vs. paying admissions and transit fares as we went.

(Half) Day 1

After claiming our bags and buying a couple of bars of dark chocolate (duty-free) at Bergen’s Flesland International Airport, we splurged on a taxi to our hotel. Hotel Thon Orion is just a couple of blocks from the Bryggen UNESCO World Heritage Site and next door to Bergenhus Festning (Bergen Fortress). As far as three-star hotels go, this one was perfectly adequate. Our room had a small sitting area at one end plus a small desk. Of note, the shower was excellent! And the windows were soundproof.

By the time we checked in, we’d been traveling more than 16 hours. But since it was about 15:00 local time, it made no sense to have a nap. Instead, we went for a walk and grabbed a bite to eat.

Then, at 6 pm, we joined local Get Your Guide, Eirik, for a two-hour walking tour of central Bergen. It rained off and off, but nothing torrential. Our tour group was small – just six visitors, including us. So we asked plenty of questions and learned a LOT about Bergen and Norway. Some highlights:

Håkon’s Hall and Bergenhus Festning

The first stop on our walking tour was Bergenhus Festning (Bergen Fortress), located at the entrance to Bergen’s harbour. Here, we learned that the site was once the royal residence of Håkon Håkonsson, King of Norway from 1217 to 1263. Håkon’s Hall, built between 1247 and 1261, was the largest royal residence at the time, when Bergen was the political center of Norway. Our walking tour included exterior views of the Hall. We returned later in the week to take a look inside.

During the 16th century, Norway became part of the Danish kingdom, and no longer required a permanent royal residence. The Hall became a storage building.

As Norway began to gradually regain independence in the 19th century, Norwegians were looking for inspiring national symbols. Once the great stone building in Bergenhus fortress was proven to be King Håkon Håkonsson’s a old feast hall, 50-year restoration project began, completed in the 1890s.

Explosion!

During WW II, the Nazi navy used several buildings for their western headquarters, including Rosenkrantz Tower for their radio network and Håkon’s Hall as a mess hall / storage space. The Hall, along with other buildings in the Fortress complex, suffered severe damage on April 20, 1944, when a ship laden with explosives caught fire and exploded in Bergen’s harbor. The explosion killed 158 people and wounded some 4,800, including both civilians and Nazi military personnel. Since that’s the date of Hitler’s birthday, some suspected sabotage. In fact, a welding accident caused the blast!

After WW II, a second major restoration took place, with Håkon’s Hall reopening in September 1961.

Today, the Hall is occasionally used for concerts and banquets. It’s also a museum.

Bryggen

In 1979, Bryggen Hanseatic wharf became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s entry number 59, on a list that now totals more than 1,200. The grounds for the listing include the fact that Bryggen is one of the oldest trading posts in Northern Europe. In the 13th century, Hanseat merchants from northern Germany sailed into the harbor and settled down to trade from the wharf buildings at Bryggen. They primarily traded grain for stockfish, and for centuries helped Bergen maintain its role as an important trading center.

Due to the 1944 explosion, and three major fires between 1702 and 1955, much of Bryggen has been rebuilt, multiple times. The most recent rebuilding effort followed a 1955 fire that damaged six buildings. Since then, no one is allowed to live in the historic wharf district. And the buildings are now quite a ways back from the waterline. Our guide explained that after every major fire, the debris was dumped into the harbour, pushing out the shoreline and creating a sort of quicksand upon which rebuilding took place. So settling has been an ongoing issue in the Bryggen district.

A fair amount of restoration is underway. To try to keep the area as photogenic as possible, custom tarps cover buildings under renovation. The Hanseatic Museum complex is undergoing a multi-year restoration/renovation and is fenced off. Restoration work in the UNESCO site is required to adhere as closely as possible to historical materials and construction techniques.

Picturesque Residential Streets

After a good ramble through Bryggen, where we saw the demarcation line between damaged / undamaged areas following one of the three major fires, we wound our way past a couple of parks and museums, St. Mary’s Church and then onto some picturesque residential streets, including Nedre Stolen and Steinkjellerbakken.

Honestly, I’m surprised these didn’t come up as “must photograph” streets when we planned our trip. Instead, our research surfaced Ytre Markeveien, Knosesmauet and Cort Pillsmauet – all on the other side of the harbour. Anyhow, these narrow and sometimes-steep “streets” wound through almost exclusively white-painted houses. White paint was used a lot in the past, as it was readily available and comparatively cheap. According to our guide, local regulations STRONGLY discourage changing the paint colour on these older homes, to preserve the look of the neighbourhoods.

We also learned that the angled stones in the middle of the lanes provided a bit of traction for horses. They’d get the protruding cobbles in the centre of the lane, and cart wheels would have the comparatively smooth, flat-laid cobbles on either side.

Street Art

One thing that surprised us was the amount of street art along the old residential streets. I’ve since learned that Bergen is the canvas for more than 1500 street art pieces created by some 90 active artists. Here are some of the stencil and mural street art installations we saw during our guided walking tour and throughout our time in Bergen:

Streets artists like TYV, SHY GIRL, Dr.AW, JOY, M.u.M, RC and Ninjah are residents of Bergen. Other European street artists created a couple of the pieces included above.

I also spotted some textile art while out and about in Bergen, but haven’t been able to find any information about these pieces, nor about yarn art in Bergen generally.

Public Art

Bergen also has a fair bit of public art, mainly sculptures. Our walking tour guide took us to two of them, including the Ludvig Holberg statue. This one is centrally located at the fish market. Eirik told us that Holberg, considered the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature, was born in Bergen, but left with his family when he was a child. He only returned to Bergen once, at age 15. At some point he wrote something to the effect that Bergen was the dirtiest, smelliest and most disgusting place that he had ever been, so the people of Bergen put up a statue of him so that he could forever “enjoy” being trapped in Bergen. They also like it when the seagulls poop on his head!

Our tour ended at the Sailors’ Monument (Sjomannsmonumentet). Unveiled in 1950, the twelve figures represent and honour the countless Norwegian sailors who contributed to the nation’s prosperity, from the Viking age to the 20th century.

Other sculptures photographed during our time in Bergen:

Fun Facts

Three fun facts shared by our walking tour guide:

1. Frozen pizza is the most consumed food in Norway, with tacos coming second and hotdogs third. Why frozen pizza? It’s convenient, affordable, and Norwegian frozen pizza company Grandiosa has done a great job of marketing! Apparently tacos became popular after Texas oil workers came to Norway to help start up offshore oil operations. And the Norwegian government ran a successful “Taco Fridays” campaign, encouraging people to socialize around a shared meal of tacos on Fridays.
2. There was a lot of emigration from Norway around the turn of the 20th century (shortly before Norway gained full independence), in response to continued Swedish occupation. Any Norwegian emigrating to the United States had to declare they were neither an anarchist nor a polygamist.
3. Oil and fishing account for half of Norway’s GDP. Oil proceeds go into a massive sovereign wealth fund. Our guide told us the fund owns 1.5% of all publicly-traded companies in the world and that money has been withdrawn from the fund just three times. A little fact checking reveals the fund owns, on average 0.6% of a wide range of public companies, all listed on exchanges outside of Norway. It can hold up to 5%, and all invested companies have to meet strict requirements re: the kinds of businesses they’re in/where they operate (ethical), as well as having gender balance on their boards (diversity and inclusion). I’ve also read that a portion of the fund’s income goes to fund part of the Norwegian budget each year, so maybe our guide meant that the principal amount had only been drawn down three times.

Day 2 – Museums Day

With the forecast calling for rain all day, we opted to make our first full day in Bergen a “museums day.” But since we were out and about well before any of the museums opened, we started our day by hopping on the Beffen ferry to the other side of the harbour. Our walking tour guide highly recommended the Beffen ferry, a charming little passenger ferry that takes you from Bryggen to Nykirkekaien in 10 minutes. Operating continuously since 1894, “Beffen” is an abbreviation for “Bergen elektriske færgeselskab” (Bergen electric ferry). The ferry service started out electric in 1894! In 1930, diesel engines were installed.  Today, the ferry “BEF 3” is electric.

Once in the Nykirkekaien neighbourhood, we headed towards Nordnesparken, a city park at the tip of the Nordnes Peninsula. En route, we spotted one of the neighbourhood stations for Bergen’s new pneumatic tube waste collection system.

And Bergen’s shortest street!

Nordnesparken

We finally reached our objective: Totempel, a totem pole gifted by Seattle, Bergen’s sister city. Bergen and Seattle became sister cities in 1967, after SAS established an airline route between the two cities. The Seattle-Bergen Sister City Association fosters cultural exchanges, hosting of visitors, tours, forums and film screenings to support the relationship. Seattle’s Ballard community has a mini-park that was dedicated by King Olav of Norway and in 2025, Bergen added Seattle to the signpost at the top of Mount Floyen. I enjoyed reading this backstory on the creation of the totem pole, crafted by an Irish-American.

A class of school kids was doing an activity at Nordnesparken, but we managed to get a few photos of the totem pole that didn’t include any of them.

Here are a few other photos from Nordnesparken, where we spent several minutes watching all kinds of vessels at sea and in the harbour:

We still had time before museums opened, so we walked back along the southwestern shoreline of Nordnes Peninsula. One unplanned stop was at the remains of Fredriksberg Festning, a fortress strategically placed on Nordnes’ highest point. Constructed in 1666-67, little remains today but for the tunnel gate, bastion walls and one building.

We wound through neighborhoods and eventually to the Bergen Opera House, Along the way, we encountered many tourists, all passengers off a large Norwegian Cruise Line ship. Our guided tour the evening before paid off, as we were able to provide helpful answers to some of their questions!

KODE Museum District

Hosted in a series of four buildings alongside Lille Lungegårdsvannet, Bergen Art Museum (KODE) is one of Norway’s biggest. The lake itself, which has hard, geometric edges (a squashed octagon), sports a central fountain. I assumed it to be man-made, but it’s a natural lake that’s been highly shaped by humans, including filling in the natural connection to its source and replacing it with underground pipes.

Permanenten

Back to the KODE. We began our visit at Permanenten, Kode (otherwise known as the West Norway Museum of Decorative Art), which featured paintings by Harriet Backer. She’s described as “a pioneer in Nordic painting.” It was interesting to read about the various phases she went through and her lifelong friendship with colleague Kitty Kielland.

I also appreciated the architecture of the building, including the stained glass insert in the cupola and the wall cutouts that framed the art all over again.

Stenerson

Our second stop = the Stenerson contemporary art museum. The temporary exhibit, “What She Said,” featured local artist Lotte Konow Lund. Mr GeoK and I agree that this was our favourite KODE exhibition (evidenced by the many photographs we took!). It included more than 100 of Konow Lund’s works from 1992 to the present, including video, sculpture, drawing, painting and printing.

Rasmus Meyer

Next up, the Rasmus Meyer collection in the building of the same name. In addition to period furnishings, the collection includes several paintings by Edvard Munch, including ‘Jealousy’, ‘Melancholy’, ‘The Woman in Three Stages’ and ‘Evening on Karl Johan’. The pieces allowed us to see just how extensively Munch’ style evolved over his career, even more so than the exhibits at the Munch Museum in Oslo, which we visited later in our trip.

Other well-known Norwegian artists on display include J.C. Dahl, Harriet Backer, Erik Werenskiold, Nikolai Astrup and Gerhard Munthe. Here’s a small selection:

The final KODE building, Lysverket, was closed when we were in Bergen.

We also didn’t have time to get to any of the three composers’ homes that are part of the KODE group. Only one was open to visitors in June 2025, that being Troldhaugen (home of Edvard Grieg and his wife Nina). It’s located outside of city center, served by a 45+ minute bus ride. And it’s not included in the KODE museum day pass that we got for discounted price thanks to the Bergen Card. Hence our decision to miss out on this one. For me, it was a bit of a hard decision, because my Dad was a music teacher. And we used to listen to the Peer Gynt suites when I was growing up. And I thought Dad would be tickled if we went to Edvard Grieg’s home. However, traveling is often about trade offs.

Natural History Museum

Instead, we walked to the Natural History Museum at Bergen University, one of our walking tour guide’s recommendations. He was spot on. We spent a wonderful couple of hours there. The building itself is impressive. The grounds, including extensive gardens, are lovely.

One highlight was the special 200th anniversary exhibition, “The University Museum through 200 Years,” which included 200 items (out of nearly 5 million objects managed by the Museum), selected by 200 staff members. The items were an eclectic mix, including Eggjasteninen (Norway’s Rosetta Stone), a Tyrannosaurus rex skull (inspiration for the Jurassic Park logo), a taxidermy Okapi, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s penguin, and more.

We also enjoyed the wide range of permanent exhibitions (although the blue whale at the Natural History Museum in London is more impressive than the one in Bergen’s “Whale Hall”). Some were challenging to photograph, because the objects were behind glass.

After exploring every floor, we headed outside to the Museum Garden where we spotted bees, blossoms and more.

Street Photography and Food

The last few hours of Day 2 were all about finding somewhere to eat, heading back to Nykirkekaien neighborhood to photograph Bryggen from across the harbour, and retracing part of Day 1’s walking tour for more photography.

Kafé Spesial, just a few blocks from Bergen University, was a chance find with excellent and reasonably priced food.

Honestly, our photos of Bryggen from across the harbour disappoint. The best images we saw online before our trip are taken at night, with Bryggen and coloured lights reflected on the water. The sun never really sets this far north in June, so we didn’t have a realistic hope of coming away with anything close. Honestly, we think Trondheim’s historic, colorful wooden warehouses along the Nidelva River are the better choice at this time of year.

Day 3 – More Museums + Churches

Another summer day in Bergen = another rainy day in Bergen! 😉 Fortunately, we still had a couple of museums on our list, plus three churches.

Bryggens Museum

A 13 year archaeological excavation after the 1955 Bryggen fire uncovered hundreds of thousands of objects which gave an insight into everyday life in the city in the Middle Ages. These stories of “old” Bergen swayed public opinion. Residents decided to rebuild instead of demolishing the remains of the 1955 Bryggen fire. In 1976, Bryggens Museum was established.

It’s constructed right over the remains of Bergen’s oldest buildings from the first half of the 1100s. These architectural remains are an important part of the museum’s permanent exhibition, and give visitors the experience of life in Bergen in the Middle Ages. 

Other objects include Runic inscriptions with gossip, poems and spells. Ceramics from Europe and the Middle-East evidence an extensive and international trade network. Glass shelving units display jewelry and weapons, pottery and clothing. Photography was challenging!

Leprosy Hospital Museum

We departed Bryggens Museum in time to walk to the Leprosy Museum for the daily guided tour. Maria shared a LOT of fascinating information with us:

• Founded prior to 1411 (known because of a bequest in a will dated 1411);
• The oldest building in the complex is the 1711 church;
• The St. George’s hospital building was constructed in the 1750s, and was Bergen’s first 2-story building
• The “hospital” was an open group home, with no staff until the 1830s
• Patients had to cover the cost of their own food, medicine and clothing, so they made items to sell at the local market to supplement the food stipend
• Poorer leprosy patients lived at the “hospital,” with wealthier families paying for in-home medical care of family members with leprosy
• There are two forms of leprosy – one form causes the immune system to attack nerves, resulting in loss of vision and loss of nerve feeling which leaves patients prone to injuries; the other form grows nodules in the eyes, ears and throat (making breathing difficult)
• Leprosy doesn’t directly kill people; people die “with” leprosy and life expectancy is shorted by about 5 years
• Bergen’s own Dr Hansen discovered that leprosy is caused by an airborne bacterial infection, with about 95% of the population naturally immune
• Once contracted, leprosy takes 3-7 years to incubate
• St George’s hospital stopped taking patients in 1896; after the last two patients died in 1946, the hospital shut down
• Today, a combination of three antibiotics cures leprosy; WHO patented the treatment, so it’s very inexpensive

After the tour, we spent some time exploring the herb garden.

Fantoft Stave Church

Getting There

We made use of our Bergen Card to catch one of Bergen’s LRT routes to the Fantoft neighbourhood. Our objective? Visiting Fantoft Stave Church, the first of four stave churches we saw while in Norway.

Following bad advice from Google Maps, we ended up circling an industrial park before finally spotting a sign directing us to the church.

History

What’s a stave church? It’s a medieval, post-and-lintel constructed wooden church, distinguished by its unique verticil planks (“staves”) that stand on a timer foundation. These churches represent a technologically advanced and elaborate form of wooden construction from the Middle Ages, with intricate carvings blending Christian and Viking motifs.

This particular stave church was built in Sogn in 1170. Over next centuries, it was modified several times, including adding a west tower, before it was demolished in 1883. Consul Fredrik Georg Gade purchased the materials from the demolished church and arranged for it to be rebuilt on his property Fantoft, where it served as a chapel for the family.

In early June 1992, Fantoft Stave Church set on fire and burned to the ground. The only thing left were the remains of the framework. A decision to rebuild the church followed quickly. But reconstruction was a challenge, as it had been several hundred years since the last stave church was built in Norway, and knowledge about this type of structure had faded away. Most of the parts had to be fabricated on site, making reference to surveys and drawings. The timber used for the reconstruction was from 350-400 year old pine trees harvested in Kaupanger. The only remaining objects from the original church are a wish stone that is placed in one wall, and the cross at the altar.

Consecrated in August 1997, the reconstructed church is open for visits during the summer season. Despite being one of many popular photo motifs from Bergen on Instagram, we consider our guided tour of the Urnes stave church (UNESCO World Heritage Site) a vastly superior experience.

Slettebakken Church

Returning to the LRT station, we headed back to city center, but got off again after only two minutes.

Then we walked several minutes to Slettebakken Church, built of concrete, in the brutalist style, with a sail-like copper roof.

Consecrated in 1970, Tore Sveram’s design won a competition. Although young as churches go, it’s a “listed” church, i.e. it’s considered a cultural monument worth of protection by Norway’s National Heritage Board. I would have loved to see the inside!

Mariakirken (St. Mary’s Church)

Back on the LRT, we rode all the way to city center and then walked to St Mary’s Church, one of the oldest buildings in Bergen. Originally built in the Romanesque style, it partially burned down twice. It’s quite easy to spot repairs in the stone work of the two towers bracketing the western portal. Other styles influenced the rebuilding efforts. For example, the choir is Gothic. The pulpit is in the Baroque style. In fact, the pulpit resembles no other pulpit in Norway. A 1676 gift by a group of prominent merchants from the Bryggen area, the use of tortoiseshell and lacquer word suggest it may have been crafted in Holland. The Visit Bergen websites states photos are not permitted inside Mariakirken, but everyone was taking photos during our visit, including us!

Dr. Weisener’s

For supper, we headed into a residential neighbourhood not far from our hotel. After climbing several sets of stairs and crossing a steep street, we found the entrance to Dr Weisener’s. We figured that arriving at 4 pm, we’d beat the crowd. But no, the place was jam-packed, mainly because of the Thursday special – Raspeballer, consisting of potato dumplings, smoked pork neck, lamb sausage, bacon, yellow mashed turnip and sliced carrots. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mr GeoK order this!

On the recommendation of several locals at adjacent tables, I tried the Pluukfisk – smoked cod in mashed potatoes with bechamel sauce, topped with bacon and green onions. We both enjoyed our pub fare very much, and were in and out in less than an hour.

Day 4 – Vidden Hike

Finally, a day without (much) rain in the forecast, so we set out to do one of the hikes we short-listed during our pre-trip planning. It was also a top recommendation from our walking tour guide, Eirik.

The trail connects the Ulriken cable car station with the upper funicular platform, traversing three of the seven mountains around Bergen. Rated 4.6/5 on AllTrails (please don’t start with the All Fails comments 😉 ), the stated distance is 13.6 km with 402 meters elevation gain, requiring 5 to 6 hours.

Sherpa Staircase

Our actual experience = 16.4 km, 951 meters elevation gain and took about 6 hours. Why the big difference? Because we didn’t check the operating hours for the Ulriken cable car and, assuming it operated the same hours as the funicular, showed up about 45 minutes before start up. Rather than hang around 45 minutes, we opted to hike up the 1,333 “Sherpa staircase” to the upper station, all before starting the actual hike!

Vidden to Fløyen

We were underwhelmed by the actual hike. Which goes to show how spoiled we are by ready access to so many premier hiking trails in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The biggest things this hike has going for it are 1) proximity to central Bergen; and 2) the fact that you can ride the cable car or funicular up, skipping a good portion of the elevation gain.

A lot of the trail was like a mash up of Grizzly Col (bog) and Bourgeau or Healy Pass (running water on the surface of the trail). Boardwalks are installed across some of the boggiest stretches. But many of the boardwalks were in serious need of repairs. Unique to Vidden Trail? All the grazing sheep!

In addition to being able to say we climbed the Sherpa steps and the sheep, a third memorable aspect of this hike was enjoying the views from the top of the Fløibanen funicular. It’s definitely worth riding up at least once, if you ever visit Bergen.

Post-hike Treats

After riding the funicular down, we stopped in at Fjåk, the first bean to bar chocolate maker in Norway. We first encountered Fjåk at The Northwest Chocolate Festival in 2023. Then we stopped in next door, at Hallaisen Ice Cream & Desserts for a well-deserved treat after our hike. That’s when Mr GeoK decided the “cheesy” taste of Norwegian ice cream isn’t his thing (so we switched to gelato for the rest of our trip)!

Free Concert

After a long hike, we looked forward to a good night’s sleep before departing Bergen the following morning. So we were a little dismayed to discover Bergenhus Festning was site of an open air concert that evening. But it turned out to be great! We enjoyed a free Neil Young concert when our hotel room windows were open. And when we were ready to go to sleep, we closed the windows and it was like the concert suddenly ended! We couldn’t see the stage from our room, just the admission line-up and the port-a-loos.

Final Thoughts on Bergen

• Walkable <– the best thing Bergen has going for it, in our opinion 🙂
• Bergen Card offers good value if you want to visit lots of attractions and will use public transit
• It’s Europe’s rainiest city; bring rain gear and an umbrella
• Good restaurants, plenty of museums and churches
• When cruise ships dock, adjacent sections of the city feel swarmed
• Biggest regret = never getting around to trying the reindeer hotdog with lingonberry sauce at Trekroneren hotdog stand

This is the first in a series of blog posts about five weeks of travel in Norway. Stay tuned for the next installment, covering our 5-day road trip from Bergen to Kristiansund.

Post Script – while writing this post I learned there’s a community in Alberta named Bergen. It was established in 1907 by J.T. Johannesen and a group of Norwegian settlers, who named it for the city of Bergen, Norway. The name derives from “Bjørgvin”, meaning meadow between the mountains. Bergen, Alberta, is located 12 km (7.5 miles) south of Sundre, and most services for the community are found in Sundre, as it’s an unincorporated community in Mountain View County.

Alberta’s Bergen is known to many sculptors around the world because of Bergen International Sculpture Park – a 3-acre property funded by owner and sculptor, Morton Burke. Burke hosted annual sculpture symposia from 2008-2011, during which 23 sculptors from around the world created sculptures. Some of those are installed in Bergen Rocks, while others are exhibited in Olds and Sylvan Lake. Burke works in stone, wood, ice and snow. I wonder if we’ve ever seen his work at Banff Snow Days? And I’ve added Bergen Rocks to our “someday” list. 🙂