Day 7 - Bergen - Part 1 Troldhaugen and Fantoft

The early part of our day was a bit more stressful than most. We had been planning on taking a trip to Stavanger and exploring the Lysefjord. However, we didn't seem to be the only people with that idea. ALL of the hotels/B&Bs/hostels in the whole Stavanger region were all booked out. So we spent an hour or so at the library firing off emails to various B&Bs in the general area around Bergen (so essentially western Norway) to see what was available. Once we felt we had covered enough bases, we headed out for the day. Our first destination was Troldhaugen, Edward Grieg's home. During the summer, they also perform lunch time concerts, so we hoped to get to tour the grounds and take in some music.


The house is on a lake a few miles south of central Bergen. And despite not having any printed schedules or maps, the light rail in Bergen is quite handy. So we hopped on the train and rode off into the suburbs. From the train station, it's another mile or two walk to the house. It was quite a pleasant walk through a nice neighborhood. The house itself is on an acre or two of land, but it abuts newer and currently occupied homes. Which is wild, I can't imagine being in an average neighborhood and being able to say, oh yeah, that's Grieg's house next door! It's a beautiful area, and I can certainly see why he would have chosen this spot.



We had a little bit of time to stroll through the museum and have a small picnic lunch before it was time for the concert. There is a separate building for concerts - I'm not sure when it was built, but I don't think it was there when Grieg was still alive.


It has a large glass window that looks out onto the lake. Once everyone was seated, a gray-haired gentleman strolled out, sat down, and played several songs on the piano. Then he got up, told us a bit about Grieg and his love of Norwegian history and folk lore. He said that he would play several songs, covering a variety of Grieg's styles. He didn't have any sheet music, and didn't seem to have any particular plan of which songs to play. He then sat back down, and played for another 30 minutes or so. It was phenomenal. He was an excellent player, and it was just such a perfect setting. After the concert, we walked around the grounds some more.




His composing studio is a tiny little building just a few feet from the lake. Next to the small piano is a chaise - and I can't help but imagine his wife laying there listening as he wrote. They had a very romantic relationship. It's perhaps a strange thing to find touching, but before Grieg died, he decided he wanted to be buried on the grounds. And he didn't want a standard grave, he had a hole blown out of one of the rock walls overlooking the lake. When he died, his body was interred there, with a piece of slate covering the opening. When Nina died nearly 30 years later, she was laid to rest right next to him. Both of their names are engraved on the slate.



From Troldhaugen, we went to see a stave church. For our first, and ultimately only one of two, it was sort of ironic. The church was originally built in the 12th Century, quite a ways from Bergen. Sometime in the 1800s, a wealthy local man decided to move the church to Bergen and make some updates to it. Which in itself would be somewhat disappointing. But then the whole thing burned to the ground about 20 years ago! So what stands now is a replica. Very well done, but still, it's missing some of the sweat and blood of a true building of that age. At least the stone cross out front is original.