5 Days in Bergen

Bryggen, "the Wharf", is the row of tall wooden gabled houses along the east side of the harbor, and the most photographed view in Bergen. Until 1945 it was called Tyskebryggen, the German Wharf. From around 1350 until 1754, it was the Kontor, the office, of the Hanseatic League, the alliance of German trading towns. About a thousand German merchants, apprentices and workers lived here all year, and twice as many in summer, in an all-male community with its own rules and its own church, buying dried cod from northern Norway and selling grain. The houses burned many times, worst of all in 1702, and were rebuilt on the same plan each time, so what you see is a medieval street pattern in 18th-century timber. Another fire in 1955 destroyed the northern part of the row.

Don't just photograph the facades. Walk into the narrow passages between the houses, like Bredsgården and Svensgården, where the wooden galleries, leaning walls and old wells show how the Kontor really worked. Today the buildings hold craft shops, studios and restaurants.

At the north end of the wharf, Bryggens Museum was built over the excavations made after a fire in 1955, and it shows what lies under Bryggen: the foundations of the 12th-century town, with its wharves, houses and the things people left behind. The best part is the collection of runic sticks, small pieces of wood on which medieval Bergen people carved messages in runes, from business notes to prayers, jokes and love letters.

Next door is St Mary's Church, the oldest building in Bergen, from the 1100s, which was the Hanseatic merchants' church. The Hanseatic Museum's main building at Bryggen has been closed for restoration since 2018 and is due to reopen in 2027, but from May to October you can visit Schøtstuene, the assembly rooms where the merchants met and ate in winter, with a guided tour included.

Past the end of Bryggen is Bergenhus, one of the oldest fortresses in Norway, where Bergen's kings lived when the city was the capital in the 1200s. Its centerpiece is Håkonshallen, the great stone banqueting hall that King Haakon Haakonsson built in 1247-61, first used for the wedding feast of his son Magnus in 1261, and the largest medieval secular building in Norway.

On 20 April 1944, a Dutch ship carrying explosives, the Voorbode, blew up at the quay right below it, killing around 160 people, wrecking the hall's roof and damaging much of Bryggen. Håkonshallen was restored in the 1950s and is still used for royal banquets. Next to it, the Rosenkrantz Tower, a 16th-century tower built around an older keep, has stairs and chambers to explore and cannon on the roof with a view over the harbor.

Walk back along the harbor to its head, where the Fish Market, Fisketorget, stands. Bergen has had a fish market since at least the 1200s, and it's been on this spot since the 1500s. In summer the outdoor stalls sell shrimp, salmon, king crab and whale, at prices aimed squarely at cruise passengers, and most locals won't eat there. Look, then go into Mathallen, the glass market hall on the same square, where the fish shops and the restaurant Fjellskål serve better food all year round.

The dish to order is bergensk fiskesuppe, Bergen fish soup: a creamy, slightly sweet and sour soup with white fish, salmon, carrots and leeks, finished with a dash of vinegar. For the classic version, locals go to Søstrene Hagelin, a fish shop and café on Strandgaten that also makes Bergen's best fish cakes. It's closed on Sundays.

Walk five minutes from the fish market to the bottom station of the Fløibanen funicular, which has climbed Mount Fløyen since 1918. In about six minutes you're 320 meters up, with the whole city laid out below: the harbor, Bryggen, the lake in the park, the islands and the sea. It's the classic Bergen view, and at sunset, when the lights come on, it's at its best.

At the top there are forest paths, a little lake, a playground with wooden trolls and a café. Locals ride up and walk down: the path back to town takes about 40 minutes, and the zigzag lanes of the last stretch, through the wooden houses of Fjellsiden, are the best part. Many locals skip the funicular and walk up too.

Back at Bryggen, have dinner at Bryggeloftet & Stuene, which has served traditional Norwegian food in one of the wharf's buildings since 1910. It's the place for kjøttkaker, meat patties in brown gravy with peas and lingonberries, Bergen fish dishes and, in autumn, fårikål, the national dish of mutton and cabbage.

The day starts with the train east along the fjords and lakes to Voss, an adventure-sports town of rafting, paragliding and skiing, about 1 hour 15 minutes away. There a bus takes you through farmland to the Stalheim Hotel, which stands on the edge of a cliff with one of the most famous views in Norway, straight down the Nærøy valley, and then down to the fjord. The old road down, the Stalheimskleiva, with its hairpin bends between two waterfalls, is now closed to traffic, so the bus takes the tunnel.

At Gudvangen you board the boat through the Nærøyfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord and one of the narrowest fjords in the world, in places only about 250 meters wide, with mountains rising more than 1,000 meters straight out of the water. It's on the UNESCO list together with the Geirangerfjord. Stay on deck as long as you can stand the cold: there are waterfalls, tiny farms on ledges that were once reachable only by boat, and in summer, porpoises and seals. The boat turns into the wider Aurlandsfjord and ends in Flåm.

Flåm is a tiny village at the end of the fjord that sees a huge number of visitors. You'll usually have about an hour here. Ægir, a brewpub built to look like a Viking stave church, brews its own beer and serves smoked salmon and lamb from the valley, and it's the easiest place for lunch.

The Flåm Railway climbs 20 km from the fjord to Myrdal on the mountain plateau, rising about 865 meters, and it's one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in the world. It took 16 years to build, through 20 tunnels, and opened in 1940. In summer the train stops at the Kjosfossen waterfall so you can get out and feel the spray, and a woman in red appears dancing among the rocks, a nod to the huldra, the seductive forest spirit of Norwegian folklore.

At Myrdal you change to the Bergen Line for the ride home across the mountains, back in Bergen in the evening. For a late dinner, Trekroneren, the hot dog kiosk on Kong Oscars gate, sells reindeer sausages until late.

Start the morning like a Bergenser with a skillingsbolle, the local cinnamon bun: a big, flat, sticky swirl, crisp on top, usually eaten by unrolling it. The name comes from the skilling, the old coin it once cost. Every bakery in town makes one and every local has an opinion. Baker Brun, in business since the 1890s, has a shop at Bryggen and another in the center, and Godt Brød bakes theirs with organic flour. For coffee, Bergen has a strong specialty scene, with Kaffemisjonen and Blom among the best.

Along the south side of Lille Lungegårdsvann, the octagonal lake in the middle of the park that locals call Smålungeren, stand the four buildings of KODE, one of the largest art and design museums in the Nordic countries. The highlight is the Rasmus Meyer collection, with one of the world's best groups of paintings by Edvard Munch, from the early portraits to the anxious pictures of the 1890s. The same building has the Norwegian painters of the 1800s, including J.C. Dahl, who painted the mountains and fjords before anyone thought they were beautiful.

The other buildings hold changing exhibitions of contemporary art and design, and Lysverket, in the old power company building, is also one of Bergen's Michelin-starred restaurants.

Walk up to Bergen Cathedral, a church from the 1100s that has burned and been rebuilt several times. Look at the tower wall: there's a cannonball stuck in it from the Battle of Vågen in 1665, when an English fleet attacked Dutch merchant ships sheltering in Bergen's harbor and the city's guns fired back.

From there, walk down through Marken, a narrow lane of old wooden houses and cafés, to Torgallmenningen, the wide main square. Its width is a firebreak, cut through the town after the great fires to stop the next one spreading. The Sailors' Monument in the middle honors Bergen's centuries at sea.

The peninsula of Nordnes, west of the center, is where Bergen's old wooden town survives best. Walk up from the harbor through steep, narrow lanes of white and pastel timber houses, with flowers on the steps and cats on the windowsills. Bergen was once the largest wooden city in Europe, and this is what it looked like. Look for Knøsesmauet, near the old Klosteret square, which locals rate as the prettiest lane in town. Be quiet, people live here.

Nordnes is also home to the oldest of Bergen's buekorps, the boys' brigades that have marched through the streets with drums, wooden crossbows and flags since the 1850s, practicing in spring and parading on 17 May. They're found nowhere else in the world, and the Buekorps Museum is in an old tower on the peninsula.

At the tip is Nordnesparken, a park on a rocky point over the fjord, with a totem pole given by Bergen's sister city Seattle, a sea pool and a sauna. The Bergen Aquarium is right next to it, with penguins, sea lions and Norwegian sea life, good for a rainy afternoon or with children.

For dinner, go back to Bryggen for Enhjørningen, "The Unicorn", a seafood restaurant in an old Hanseatic house, with wooden floors and paintings on the walls. Bergen was named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy in 2015, and this is the cooking it's known for: fish and shellfish from the cold water off the coast, cooked simply. In season, look for persetorsk, pressed cod, a local specialty.

Fantoft Stave Church is a wooden church in the style of the Middle Ages, with stacked roofs and dragon heads on the gables. The original was built in the 1100s in Fortun, by the Sognefjord, and moved here in 1883 by a Bergen consul, Fredrik Georg Gade, who saved it from demolition. On 6 June 1992 it burned to the ground in an arson attack, one of a wave of church burnings linked to the early Norwegian black metal scene. It was rebuilt as an exact copy and reopened in 1997. It stands in a pine forest, and it's the easiest stave church to visit from Bergen.

Edvard Grieg, Norway's great composer, was born in Bergen in 1843, and from 1885 until his death in 1907 he spent his summers at Troldhaugen, "Troll Hill", a painted wooden villa on a point over Nordåsvannet, an inlet of the fjord. Down the slope is the tiny hut where he composed, with a piano and a view of the water, and in the cliff by the lake is the grave where his and his wife Nina's ashes are sealed.

In summer, short lunchtime piano concerts of Grieg's music are played in the concert hall, Troldsalen, with the water behind the pianist, and you can book them with a bus from the center. Outside summer, it's a walk through a park to the hut and the grave, which is worth it for the setting. For Grieg's music in winter, check the program of the Bergen Philharmonic at Grieghallen, an orchestra founded in 1765 that Grieg himself conducted.

Ulriken, at 643 meters, is the highest of Bergen's seven mountains, the ring of peaks around the city (locals still argue about which seven count). A cable car takes you to the top in a few minutes, and the view is wider and wilder than from Fløyen: the whole city, the islands to the west, and the mountains rolling inland. There's a restaurant at the top, Skyskraperen.

If you're fit, walk up instead on the Sherpa steps, about 1,300 stone steps laid by Sherpas from Nepal. Locals' other favorite workout is Stoltzekleiven, about 800 stone steps up Sandviksfjellet from the north of town, and the flat Fjellveien road along the mountainside above the center is the easy walk with the view.

Thursday is raspeball day in Bergen. Raspeballer, also called komle, are big, dense dumplings of grated potato and flour, simmered and served with salted lamb, sausage, bacon, boiled potatoes and mashed swede, with melted butter poured over the lot. It's heavy, old-fashioned and very western Norwegian.

Pingvinen, "The Penguin", a busy pub on Vaskerelven with mismatched furniture and old family photos on the walls, serves Norwegian home cooking every day and raspeballer on Thursdays. Some locals grumble that it's become a tourist favorite, but the food is still the real thing.

Bergen is a student city with a big music scene. It gave the world the "Bergen Wave" of the early 2000s, Kings of Convenience and Röyksopp among them, and, darker, a lot of Norwegian black metal. Hulen, a student-run rock club in an old air-raid shelter dug into the rock, opened in 1969 and is said to be the oldest rock club in Norway. Kvarteret, the student culture house, has gigs and bars on several floors.

For a quieter evening, Henrik Øl og Vinstove has dozens of Norwegian craft beers on tap, from Bergen's own 7 Fjell to Hansa, the city's lager since 1891. On the way home, do as the students do and stop at Trekroneren, the hot dog kiosk on Kong Oscars gate.

If you don't have time for the big fjords, this is the next best thing, and it's easy. The boat sails north from Bergen through the Osterfjord, where the mountains rise steeply on both sides, and into Mostraumen, a narrow strait with strong currents, so tight that the boat seems to brush the rock. On the way it pulls in close under a waterfall.

It's a calm cruise in a heated boat with big windows, so it works in any weather, and in winter, with snow on the mountains and almost nobody around, it's the best value fjord trip from the city.

Walk or take a bus north along the shore to Sandviken, an old neighborhood of wooden warehouses and workers' houses. At the end is Gamle Bergen, Old Bergen, an open-air museum of 55 wooden houses from the 1700s and 1800s moved here from the center when they were in the way of modern streets. They make a little town of their own, with a baker, a dentist, a merchant's house and a square, and in summer actors play the people who lived in them.

On the way back, walk through Skuteviken, a little bay of wooden boathouses and homes just north of Bryggen.

On the way back, stop at the Norwegian Fisheries Museum in Sandviken, in old wooden sea warehouses from the 1700s on the water. It tells the story the whole of Bergen is built on: the cod of the north, dried into stockfish and salted into klippfisk, shipped through Bergen to Europe for centuries, and the modern fishing and fish-farming industry.

For the last dinner, choose between old and new Bergen. Bryggen Tracteursted, in a Hanseatic building from 1708, builds its menu on what was eaten on the wharf: klippfisk and stockfish, cooked in old and new ways, plus reindeer and local lamb. For modern Nordic cooking with fish and shellfish from the coast, book Lysverket, the Michelin-starred restaurant in the KODE building.