Bergen was founded as a city in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre and its original name meant “the green meadow among the mountains”. Bergen sits on the far west coast of Norway and it served as the capital of Norway in the 13th century. It was the largest city in Norway until it was overtaken by Oslo in the 1830’s. Today, Bergen is Norway’s second largest city with about 280,000 people. Since its start, Bergen has been a fishing and trading center. Today, Bergen is an international center for aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry, sub-sea technology and a national center for tourism, finance, media, and higher education. According to a woman who works and owns a local restaurant, the early days of Bergen involved fishing, farming, distillers, and prostitutes.

The municipality area around Bergen covers 180 square miles but Bergen is on a peninsula and many of the suburbs are on islands. The population of the municipal area is about 420,000 people. But Bergen seemed like a smallish town to me. The main area of Bergen was rather compact and highly walkable. Bergen has also suffered from numerous fires over the years, so its architecture is also very mixed. I very much enjoyed our stay in Bergen.

The first photo is my vision of Bergen. Our hotel was immediately to the left of this photo. This street is right on the harbor and I suspect that these are some of the oldest buildings in Bergen. This was a lively area of town and popular with both locals and tourists from what I could see. We spent quite a bit of time here.

If you walked straight ahead in the first photo until the end of what can be seen in the first photo, and then looked to the left, you would be seeing the second photo. Bergen sits at the bottom of the mountains and the mountains are still mostly just forests.

One of our first explorations in Bergen was to take the Floibanen, or Funicular, up to Mount Floven. You can see one view from the top in the third photo. There were views in many directions of nearby islands, fjords, and the surrounding mountains. Our guide said that Mount Floven was supposed to be one of the seven mountains of Bergen. But he said that Bergen really only has five mountains but they wanted to be like Rome. You can see this viewing location on the top of the mountain in the second, fourth and fifth photos of this post, but you have to look closely. The ride up the mountain in the funicular took six minutes. But then we decided to walk down the mountain. It was a very nice walk through the woods but it took a long time as the trail switch-backed back and forth dramatically. They made it a relatively easy walk but a very long walk. Parts of the walk took us past a children’s playground and a Troll forest.

The fourth photo is a lake in front of the city center area. This area has a pedestrian mall, city offices, and our guide said was a place that people held demonstrations. It was just another lovely view of Bergen.

The last photo is right on the harbor but across the harbor from where we were staying. We had some nice weather in Bergen and people were outside enjoying it.