We had another hiking day today and covered a lot of ground. Along the way, we had to check out a very interesting landmark--an piece of an anchor, 3 kilometers from the Bergen harbor. It was 1944, and there was a large German artillery ship in the Bergen harbor. There was an accident (not sabotage, even though it happened in April, on Hitler's birthday), and the ship blew up. The explosion was so immense that it DRAINED all of the water in Bergen harbor, and blew debris as far as Mt. Ulriken. The anchor that we saw was from that ship! The explosion created fires and many buildings were destroyed, especially when the water swept back into the harbor. It's hard to wrap your brain around how big this event was. Tonnes is an encyclopedia of historical information about Bergen and shares all this interesting background with us--it adds so much to our enjoyment of seeing things here.
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| Hiking along the ridge above Bergen and the harbor. |
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| The anchor and plaque. |
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| Looking from the anchor back toward the sea--you can see how far away we are. |
Bergansers like to get out and walk in the mountains; not "hike" particularly, but they get out a lot and
walk. We are pleasantly surprised at how many people are out walking on the trails above Bergen, sometimes for exercise, but mostly for strolling--it's like a cultural characteristic.
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| Mothers out strolling with their babies and enjoying nature. |
After we left the anchor, we headed on up to summit another of Bergen's hills, this time Mt. Blaamann. Except for the Vidden hike we did right off, this was my favorite. AND we had some nice weather--cloudy and cool this morning, but becoming sunny this afternoon. We ended up doing quite a long loop from Tonnes's house and back; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; I'm not sure how many miles we went. Mt. Blaamann is at 550 meters, so about 1800 feet above sea level. Not particularly high, but very rocky and barren.
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| Looking up toward Mt. Blaamann |
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