Lunch at the fish market. Steamed shrimp and cured salmon!
Grieg's composing hut at water's edge
Ole Bull (violinist)
Bergen waterfront
Great weather!
Let me begin with breakfast. It was a buffet in our hotel lobby cafe. The cafe has a pitched roof. It is clear glass. Looking through it we see the pointy roofs of the previously mentioned UNESCO World Heritage Site's wooden waterfront buildings. The hotel is connected directly to the backside of the buildings. The buffet had the usual items: an omelet bar, a bread table, cheeses, salmon, etc. However, the breads were a variety of exceptional whole grain, handmade, unsliced loaves on a table who's large top is a slatted cutting board with a shelf of baskets beneath. You wrap a cloth napkin around the bread, take a long bread knife and slice your desired amount of slices, toast them if you wish then place them in your basket. Voila! The salmon was house cured, luxurious, rich and sumptuous. It was surrounded by ceramic tubs of pickled herring. I love pickled herring. In wine sauce, or in sour cream, or in red sauce, I love them all and there they were. I was in herring heaven. I recognize herring is not everyones cup of tea, but that simply means: more for me.
Afterward we walked around the waterfront and happened upon a lovely tree lined promenade called Ole Bull plaza. (Ole is pronounced oh-lay). The centerpiece of which is a rectangular fountain. In one-third of it is a mini-mountain of piled large stones. Water cascades from the top as if it is spring and a river is rushing downhill. Atop the stones is a bronze statue of Ole Bull (more on him later) holding his violin in playing position. The fountain was unveiled in 1901 and Edvard Grieg was on-site to speak words of praise honoring Ole Bull who had died twenty-one years earlier.
Adjacent to the statue is a theater with a poster anouncing the upcoming concerts of the international jazz festival and a viola recital with harpsichord which occurs the day after we leave. We are here between the spring and summer concert seasons and there is very little going on this week except for one program by the Bergen Philharmonic featuring a male flamenco dancer from Seville dancing shirtless to Ravel's Bolero.
Next stop on our walk was the tourist office. It is housed in the grand high-ceilinged lobby of a century-old building known for it's large 1920's murals covering the four walls and depicting various aspects of Norwegian fishing history.
From there we boarded a local bus and asked to be let off near the Edvard Hagerup Grieg house fifteen minutes from our hotel. From the bus stop it was another fifteen minutes to walk to house which sits at the end of a long unpaved, shady, tree-lined driveway. I must mention the trees, simply to say that it is spring and after a long winter's rest they are full of buds that are bursting into luminous new green leaves.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907) was, in his time, revered as Norway's great composer. Today he is revered as Norway's national treasure. The Grieg property consists of a simple Victorian wooden main house built on a promontory in the early 1880's, a composer's hut at the water's edge and Grieg's tomb embedded in a stone cliff.
We arrived at the visitors center, saw an exhibit of Grieg's personal affects, watched a 20 minute film in which an actor reads from several of Grieg's 20,000 letter's. He wrote expressively and vividly. The film had the effect of peeking into Grieg's private journals and experiencing his most personal thoughts. It was moving to hear his words. And it set the tone for being walked, with a guide, through his house. We learned that Norway's national composer's grandparents were from Scotland and named MacGregor. Their name was shortened to Greig and was changed by Edvard to Grieg. We learned that at 15 years of age he was heard by Ole Bull who encouraged the parents to send Edvard to study music in Leipzig. In Leipzig he developed tuberculosis. One of his lungs collapsed and he was sent home to Bergen. He remained small, less than five feet tall. He married his first cousin Nina. They had only one child, a daughter, Aleksandra. She died after a year. He immersed himself in composing, conducting and appearing as a popular piano soloist. He was in extreme demand and his travel schedule was intense. He longed for a home and after he acquire land from a relative he and Nina built the house in which we stood, Troldhaugen, on hill overlooking a lake. (My name, Marlow, is a name from England that means: a hill by a lake). He spent his remaining 25 years in that house together with Nina, but only in fair weather months as the winter climate was prohibitive. We learned an interesting tidbit about Norway and Sweden. They were united until 1905 when the legislature moved to separate them. The king of the formerly united countries chose to reign in Sweden. Norway then had to find and coronate their own king who's descendants still reign.
Grieg died in 1907 and was cremated. His wife outlived him by twenty-five years and upon his death removed their possesions, sold the house and relocated to Denmark. The new owners recognized the significance of the house, moved to establish it as a monument to Grieg and by 1932 Grieg's widow, Nina, had moved their possesions back into the house, arranged each room as it had been and attended a concert performed on Grieg's 1880 vintage Steinway, in their former living room, after which she reminisced. She died within a year and her ashes were placed in urn beside Edvard's in a niche some 20 feet off the ground in a 40 foott tall vertical stone cliff facing the water.
From the house we walked back to the bus stop for the return to town. Along the bus route we saw extreme construction activity related to the creation of a light rail system parallel to main road which is only one or two lanes in each direction and heavily trafficked. The light rail being installed spans several dozen miles. It's route involves major tunnel excavation through several stone hills.
So it is lunchtime. Earlier, we saw murals honoring the Norwegian fisherman so we went to the waterfront to honor them at lunchtime by eating their fresh catches. But our fishermen were not Norwegian. They were from Portugal. So, instead, we honored the Portugese fisherman and ate fresh sweet prawns, cured and pepper crusted smoked salmon and smoked whale (did not care for the whale).
Dinner was a challenge. Our spirit of adventure needed a break. Our taste buds wanted "familiar". Not "tourist", just no more whale. We wandered through many streets, from menu to menu and finally ended up in a tree-filled, sculpture-strewn grassy plaza atop a long promenade that begins at a lower point with fountains, gazebos, the Ole Bull statue and flower gardens and ends up top at a theater established in 1850 by Ole Bull to house and encourage all of the arts. A word on Ole Bull (1810-1880-ish). He was the Paganini of Norway. And The Beatles of Norway meaning that at his performances women screamed and fainted. Across the street from Ole's theater a sign caught our eyes, "Moliere", "chocolaterie". Omelets! We had simple cheese omelets. And a salad with balsamic as thick as honey and sweet as nectar. And hot chocolate made from half and half and Valhrona dark chocolate bars with a dusting of chili powder. We finished at 9:45 p.m., it was still daylight, with fruit jellies,made that afternoon from fresh raspberry, strawberry, kiwi, pear, and apple. Tomorrow we will visit a museum to see Ole Bull's violins, particularly his 1562 Gasparo da Salo. And we will visit St. Mary's, a 12th-Century church.
