What attraction could a fishing town on Norway's icy coast possibly hold for a woman used to the balmy climes of the Mediterranean? But when Elisabeth Luard visited Bergen, it was love at first sight.
Call it the attraction of opposites, but I've been in love with Bergen since I first set foot on its wooden sidewalks more than 20 years ago. A harbour city halfway up the coast of Norway might seem an odd love object for a woman whose natural habitat is the golden hillsides of the Mediterranean. But there it is. Blind Cupid shoots his arrow where he will.
What's the attraction? The citizens would be astonished to hear their city described as 'exotic'. But for the traveller used to the uniformity of the Global Village, Bergen's oddity, its out-of-the-ordinariness in ways that can only be explained by latitude and geography, is truly exotic. Strolling round the waterfront at midnight on a summer's day, were it not for the blue-eyed blondness of those at the café tables and the nature of the souvenirs (reindeer skins, horrible trolls, oiled-wool sweaters), you might think yourself in Portofino or Palermo or Piraeus. But in winter, when the snow settles over the city like eiderdown and the streets are glazed with ice, you'd be in no doubt that we're only a few hundred miles short of the Artic Circle.
Bergen was established as a Viking trading post for the fishing settlements of the far north. From here, Norsemen traded wind-dried stockfish up and down the coast of Africa, pursuing the shoals to the shores of Newfoundland 500 years before Columbus set sail. Their presence remains in the battered trawlers, trim little pleasure yachts and fishermen's smacks which bob at anchor in the shadow of the roll-on ferries that still provide a highway to the northern fjordland.
However, it was the Hanseatic League, a consortium of bankers founded in the 12th century and based in L�beck, northern Germany, that brought real prosperity to the city. The Hansas controlled the salt-cod trade at a time when Catholic Europe was obliged to eat fish not only on Fridays and during Lent but on the eve of every feast and for 40 days before Christmas. Their legacy is a collection of wooden warehouse-dwellings, the Bryggen. With wooden walls painted oxblood-red and saffron-yellow, they stand like tall ships moored by the waterside, linked by broad wooden walkways and covered passageways, their overhanging eaves offering protection against the storms of spring and the icy darkness of winter.
Like all love affairs, we - the city and I - came together by chance. After the usual quota of years bringing up a family of four and a spell as a botanical artist, I'd turned my hand to cookery writing, a career that seemed to suit my experience. Ten years on, I was researching my first book, The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cookery. The idea had been simmering during the years spent rearing the children in a remote valley in Andalusia, where our neighbours, subsistence farmers, took pity on my ignorance of such rural essentials as how to keep, slaughter and salt down the household pig.
While the porker provided the family with the serrano ham and chorizo essential to an Andaluz feast, it was the fast-day dishes made with bacalao (salt cod, known as 'mountain fish' since it could be transported without refrigeration to inland communities) that I found the most intriguing. Here, after all, was an Atlantic fish not found in the Mediterranean that was an integral part of the local peasant diet, and the trade seemed to be traceable right back to the Vikings. The seeds of a passion were sown, and I persuaded my novelist husband Nicholas to accompany me on a 1,000-mile odyssey around the coastal byways of Scandinavia in search of the origins of the salt-cod trade.
We arrived in midsummer, when the violet twilight lasts until morning. Although the city was beautiful in the sunshine and the historical associations plain to read, most seductive for a food writer was the fish market with its tanks full of live cod for sale, heaps of fresh prawn, and crab shells with the dressed meat stuffed back into them, ready to be sold with plastic spoons to be eaten like ice cream by babies in prams. Set back from the wharves, the covered meat market offered reindeer hams, wind-dried lamb and crispbreads as thin and brittle as handmade paper to eat with slivers of Gjetöst, Norway's national cheese.
At the end of the market were stalls heaped with moorland blueberries, cloudberries, and the prized multeboer, like golden raspberries with a delicate taste of pine needles. From the orchards of the Hardangerfjorden, Norway's market garden, came plums, strawberries and cherries. In the new part of the town, queues formed at lunch in the fiskematbutikk (minced fish shop) for fishcakes made with haddock and milk, and fish dumplings and puddings to eat with melted butter or hot cream with shrimps.
That sunlit encounter was the start of the affair, but it was a few years later, in the day-long twilight of midwinter, that the relationship was cemented. Again, the meeting was casual. We were passing through the city after a visit to the fishing communities of the Lofoten Islands for the harvest of spring cod, raw material of Bergen's medieval wealth, replaced in modern times with another sea harvest, that from the oil wells of the North Sea.
It was late February. The wharves lay under snow, the citizens muffled up against the cold, but, as in summer, the windows of the Hansa quarter gleamed with life and light. It was, we noticed as we checked in to the hotel, our 30th wedding anniversary. We bought ourselves fleece-lined boots and found a restaurant within the wooden warehouses - Enhj�rningen (The Unicorn) - which served, we were assured, the best fish in Bergen. We feasted on capelin caviar, pale and delicate, and a creamy bouillabaisse made with snow-white slabs of cod, buttery liver and slivers of pink roe.
There are new pleasures for every visit. This year's summer treats were the public bathing pool - a rocky promontory by the harbour, complete with diving board - and the four-hour trip round the fjords on a ferry boat garlanded in plastic flowers. Not only ideal for Nicholas' afternoon snooze, this was perfect for me since I travel with watercolours but never usually have time to complete a sketch.
One evening, we made our way to the Olde Hanse, an informal eating house in the style of the banker brotherhoods, newly opened in a beautiful townhouse in the Bryggen. The clientele was mostly Norwegian; the staff, used to wearing national dress at weddings and celebrations, at ease in their medieval outfits; and the food - wooden platters of Scandinavian fishy things, excellent bread, a perfectly spiced apple and almond pie - was not only historically accurate but delicious.
Next February, with a following wind, we celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. No prizes for guessing where we're heading.
ADDRESS BOOK
Elisabeth stayed at:
Augustin Hotel, C Sundtsgate 22, 5004, Bergen
Opened in 1909, this is the oldest fanily-run hotel in Bergen. A comfortable, clean hotel, its corner rooms offer views of the Bryggen on the opposite side of the harbour. October prices for a double room are 1,550K (£132) during the week, and 780K (£66) on the weekend.
Call 00 47 55 30 40 00 or log on to www.augustin.no.
Elisabeth ate at:
Olde Hansa, Bryggestredet, Bryggen, 5003 Bergen
The restaurant aims to offer 'medieval dining' in a style that would be recognisable to the city's Hanseatic merchants. Prices are around 350K (£30) per person with beer. Tel 00 47 55 31 40 46; www.oldehansa.no.
Restaurant Enhj�rningen, Bryggen, 5003 Bergen
Sited in a historic building on Bergen's Hanseatic Wharf in the heart of the old town, this fish restaurant has been renovated to its original early 18th-century glory. Prices for a three-course menu with beer or wine are around 500K (£42). Tel 00 55 32 79 19.
S�strene Hagelin, Olav, Kyrresgate 33, 5014 Bergen
This 1929 fiskematbutikk offers fine fish dishes in an elegant bistro setting. A great lunch-time spot. Tel 00 47 55 32 69 49; www.sostrenehagelin.no.
Godt Br�d, Vestre Torrgate, Bergen
This organic café and bakery sells the best bread in Bergen, plus delicious berry ices in handmade waffle cones. Tel 00 47 55 56 33 10.
Elisabeth flew with:
Braathens flies to Bergen daily from London Gatwick and from Aberdeen (via Stavanger). Return fares start at £80 plus tax from London and £165 plus tax from Aberdeen. For information and bookings, call Braathens on 0191 214 0991.
For more information:
For details of places to stay and things to do, contact the Norwegian Tourist Board on 0906 302 2003 (calls cost 50p per minute), or log on to www.visitnorway.com or www.visitbergen.com.