Bergen
From Jan:
Sick in bed, poor Steven completely missed seeing Bergen.
So, I set off bravely on my own. First I went to the Bryggens Museum. I was blown away by the unique tapestry series “Åsmund Frægdagjeva” by Ragna Breivik.
These ten magnificent tapestries created by Norwegian textile artist Ragna Breivik were woven over a period of more than 25 years. She dyed the wool with natural dyes, spun it and wove the tapestries on a loom of her own design, on display at the museum.
The tapestries are based on the medieval ballad of Åsmund Frægdagjeva, who rescues Princess Ermelin from trolls in Trollebotn where the sun never shines.
These visually stunning woven images reawakened my long ago love of Viking and Icelandic sagas–as retold in medieval poetry and storytelling traditions–when I studied them in my Comparative Medieval Literature MA program at Columbia.
The story begins as many fairytales do: the fair princess has been captured and imprisoned in a faraway castle, and the King commissions a hero, in this case Åsmund, to rescue her.
He and his brothers take the King’s flagship vessel to the castle of the ogre, where the princess is imprisoned.
He finds the princess walking through the castle, and immediately falls in love with her. But she, under a spell of the ogre to believe that he is her mother, will not leave with Åsmund.
He then takes her by force. On his way out, the ogre appears. They fight a long battle both physically and with curses and spells, but Åsmund eventually kills him.
The princess being free from the spell, they plunder the castle and return home with all the ogre’s treasure.
Next I headed to the Hanseatic Museum. I was excited to see the well preserved historic Bergen headquarters of the Hanseatic League. A whole block of wooden buildings dating back to the Hanseatic era, comprising no less than 62 buildings, has been preserved.
This was a thrill for me because as a student I had studied and explored several of the ports dominated and operated by these 13th Century merchants from Northern Germany. They sailed into Bergen to exchange grain for stockfish from Northern Norway. Their trading activities made Bryggen and Bergen one of Northern Europe’s most important trading hubs for the next 400 years.
The Hanseatic League, using the power of the purse, supplanted the kingdoms and governments of Germany and Norway. The Bergen seal symbolizes this shared governance, half German heraldic eagle and half “King Codfish.”
The Hanseatic trade routes went as far West as Greenland and as far East as the Holy Land.
