.jpg)
Bergen, historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway.
As of 2022, its population was roughly 289,330. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway after the national capital Oslo. The municipality covers 465 square kilometres and is located on the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen. The city centre and northern neighbourhoods are on Byfjorden, the city fjord. The city is surrounded by mountains, causing Bergen to be called the city of seven mountains. Many of the extra-municipal suburbs are on islands. Bergen is the administrative centre of Vestland county. The city consists of eight boroughs: Arna, Bergenhus, Fana, Fyllingsdalen, Laksevåg, Ytrebygda, Årstad, and Åsane.
Trading in Bergen may have started as early as the 1020s. According to tradition, the city was founded in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin, the green meadow among the mountains.
It served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, and from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League.
Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad, and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by the capital, Christiania (now known as Oslo). What remains of the quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site.
The city was hit by numerous fires over the years. The Bergen School of Meteorology was developed at the Geophysical Institute starting in 1917, the Norwegian School of Economics was founded in 1936, and the University of Bergen in 1946. From 1831 to 1972, Bergen was its own county.
In 1972 the municipality absorbed four surrounding municipalities and became a part of Hordaland county.
The city is an international centre for aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and subsea technology, and a national centre for higher education, media, tourism and finance. Bergen Port is Norway's busiest in terms of both freight and passengers, with over 300 cruise ship calls a year bringing nearly a half a million passengers to Bergen, a number that has doubled in 10 years. Almost half of the passengers are German or British.
The city's main football team is SK Brann and a unique tradition of the city is the buekorps, which are traditional marching neighbourhood youth organisations.
Natives speak a distinct dialect, known as Bergensk. The city features Bergen Airport, Flesland and Bergen Light Rail, and is the terminus of the Bergen Line. Four large bridges connect Bergen to its suburban municipalities.
Bergen has a mild winter climate, though with significant precipitation. From December to March, Bergen can, in rare cases, be up to 20 °C warmer than Oslo, even though both cities are at about 60° North. In summer however, Bergen is several degrees cooler than Oslo due to the same maritime effects. The Gulf Stream keeps the sea relatively warm, considering the latitude, and the mountains protect the city from cold winds from the north, north-east and east.
The city of Bergen was traditionally thought to have been founded by king Olav Kyrre, son of Harald Hardråde in 1070 AD, four years after the Viking Age in England ended with the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Modern research has, however, discovered that a trading settlement had already been established in the 1020s or 1030s.
Bergen gradually assumed the function of capital of Norway in the early 13th century, as the first city where a rudimentary central administration was established. The city's cathedral was the site of the first royal coronation in Norway in the 1150s, and continued to host royal coronations throughout the 13th century. Bergenhus fortress dates from the 1240s and guards the entrance to the harbour in Bergen.
The functions of the capital city were lost to Oslo during the reign of King Haakon V (1299-1319).
In the middle of the 14th century, North German merchants, who had already been present in substantial numbers since the 13th century, founded one of the four Kontore of the Hanseatic League at Bryggen in Bergen.
The principal export traded from Bergen was dried cod from the northern Norwegian coast, which started c. 1100. The city was granted a monopoly for trade from the north of Norway by King Håkon Håkonsson (1217–1263).
Stockfish was the main reason that the city became one of North Europe's largest centres for trade.
By the late 14th century, Bergen had established itself as the centre of the trade in Norway.
The Hanseatic merchants lived in their own separate quarter of the town, where Middle Low German was used, enjoying exclusive rights to trade with the northern fishermen who each summer sailed to Bergen. The Hansa community resented Scottish merchants who settled in Bergen, and on 9 November 1523 several Scottish households were targeted by German residents. Today, Bergen's old quayside, Bryggen, is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.
The Old Norse forms of the name were Bergvin and Bjǫrgvin, and in Icelandic and Faroese the city is still called Björgvin. The first element is berg or bjǫrg, which translates as mountain(s). The last element is vin, which means a new settlement where there used to be a pasture or meadow. The full meaning is then the meadow among the mountains. This is a suitable name: Bergen is often called the city among the seven mountains. It was the playwright Ludvig Holberg who felt so inspired by the seven hills of Rome, that he decided that his home town must be blessed with a corresponding seven mountains -and locals still argue which seven they are.
In 1918, there was a campaign to reintroduce the Norse form Bjørgvin as the name of the city. This was turned down -but as a compromise, the name of the diocese was changed to Bjørgvin bispedømme.
Bergensk is the native dialect of Bergen. It was strongly influenced by Low German-speaking merchants from the mid-14th to mid-18th centuries. During the Dano-Norwegian period from 1536 to 1814, Bergen was more influenced by Danish than other areas of Norway. The Danish influence removed the female grammatical gender in the 16th century, making Bergensk one of very few Norwegian dialects with only two instead of three grammatical genders.
More information: Visit Norway
ahead of your axe and sword.
You can’t feel a battle
in your bones or foresee a fight.
The Havamal
No comments:
Post a Comment