THE CITY OF BERGEN
In a few hours after the shores of Norway came into sight, Harold saw the buildings of a town built in the midst of mountains. His father told him his grandmother lived in that town. It was Bergen (bear gen) which is surrounded by seven mountains. The houses of the town were all along the side of one of the big mountains and along the lower banks of the sea. Harold’s father was as happy as a boy to see again the red-tiled roofs of those houses among the green trees of the mountain slope.
The sun was shining when the boat pulled into dock at Bergen, but the captain told Harold to have his raincoat, rubbers, and umbrella handy, as rain might fall any minute. He said, “A year has three hundred and sixty-five days and rain falls in Bergen on three hundred and sixty days. That leaves only five clear days for Bergen in a year.”
Harold’s father said that rain did not fall quite so often as the captain said. But he told Harold that records show Bergen’s rainfall to be six times as much as the rainfall in the town where Harold lives. And Harold’s town gets enough rain each year to keep the grass green and to make the plants grow well.
Harold stopped along the water front to see the fishing boats which were standing there. Men and women were selling fish from more than a hundred boats and from stands along the street near the boats. They sold cod, herring, and halibut. Harold’s father said, “Bergen is the largest fishing market in the world. The fish are brought to Bergen in boats which fish far to the north of Bergen in the waters of the Arctic.”
But they hurried away to grandmother’s house. Harold was eager to see the grandmother whom he had never seen. Grandmother was eagerly waiting for her visitors too. She showed Harold a room which was to be his room for the summer.
The room was small. Both the walls and the floor were painted light brown. A small bed of wood stood in one corner. Over the clean white sheets, Harold found a soft quilt. The quilt was so fluffy and thick that Harold thought it must be a small feather bed. His grandmother said that the quilt was stuffed with down taken from the nests of eider ducks.
Harold enjoyed the warm cover each night, for even in summer the nights in Bergen are cool. But that soft quilt was hard to keep in place, no matter how carefully it was tucked in.
A tall narrow stove stood in one corner of the room. Harold did not need a fire, but he found a box of wood beside the stove ready for a fire when the cold days came.
In a few days, Harold knew his way around the old city of Bergen. Sometimes he walked along narrow streets between rows of wooden houses. Some of the houses are very, very old—even more than six hundred years old.