Bergen’s old Hanseatic Quarter has a crude yet romantic charm. I crouch under creaky timbers as I wander through the Hanseatic Museum. The oversized cupboards around me once housed humble workers – each minuscule “bedroom” giving them darkness and warmth through the cold and short Nordic night. Primitive paintings of buxom maidens with come-hither smiles decorated the doors as if to bring sweet dreams to those rustic 16th-century lives.
I pick up a dried cod fish–shaped like a baseball bat and just as hard. I can’t resist using it to knock the dirt off my shoes, like a ballplayer with mud on his cleats….