Yachting Monthly – September 2019

(Sean Pound) #1
floating islands as they appeared then to
be... Its back or upper part, which takes in
appearance about an English mile and a half
in circumference and looks like a number of
small islands. At least several bright points or
horns appear, which given the height they
rise above the surface of the water, and
sometimes they stand up as high and large
as the mast of a middle-sized vessel. It
seems that these are the creature’s arms,
and, if they were to lay hold of the largest
man of war, they would pull it to the bottom.’
Some say that the breathing of the Kraken
causes the rise and fall of the ocean tides.
I resolved to take advantage of the
Kraken’s respiration. On a fine summer
morning I drifted out of Limavåg and turned
to port. With the flood tide under me, I sailed
north through Raunafjord and Byfjord before
arriving at Bergen in the afternoon. I had
made a swift passage, thanks to the Kraken.

The historic city of Bergen is situated around
Vågen on the mainland of Norway and
sheltered from the North Sea by the island of
Askøy. I sailed Zephyrus into Vågen and
moored alongside in the very centre
of the city. A short distance across the
harbour was a group of medieval
timber buildings constructed on the
waterside by the merchants of
the Hanseatic League.
The Bergen kontor was a
trading colony, comparable to
the European treaty ports on
the coast of China in the 19th
and early 20th Centuries. The
Hanseatic merchants, who lived
in the kontor, enjoyed monopoly
rights. They imported grain,
textiles, wine and manufactured
goods to Bergen from the south.

With the profits they bought and exported
dried and salted fish to Europe. In those
days preserved fish was a major article of
trade because the Catholic church insisted
quite strictly that only fish, and not meat, be
eaten on a Friday or a feast day. At the
height of its trading prosperity, the kontor
occupied some five hectares of central
land in medieval Bergen, a city which at that
time had fewer than 7,000 inhabitants.
Today the Hanseatic buildings are devoted
to tourism rather than trade.
After three days in Bergen I departed
south through the islands on my way to
Denmark and the Baltic Sea. There are many
hundreds of miles of sheltered water with
countless snug anchorages and scenic
towns behind and between the islands of
the Norwegian skærgård. These waters
were the nursery of the Vikings, the highway
of the Hanseatic merchants and are arteries
of the modern Norwegian economy. They
are also a hospitable and inexhaustible
Ju resource for the cruising yachtsman.

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CRUISING LOG

The old town in Bergen is
famed for its painted houses

Bergen’s sheltered harbour
is steeped in trade history

According to Norse sagas, the Krakan
lived off the coasts of Norway and
Greenland and terrorised sailors

NORWAY

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jorde

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Raunefjorden
Limavåg

Sotra

By
fjo
rd
en

(^) Vågen
Bergen
Ask Holsn
0 5nm
Lerwick
Bergen
Oslo
Wick
SCOTLAND DENMARK
NORWAY
Shetland Is.N
ort
h (^) S
ea
0 100nm

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