Dear fellow travellers,
Early morning in Bryggen and the tourists haven’t arrived yet. The wooden buildings on the wharf - painted red, yellow and white - shine in the morning sun. The water in the harbour is still. A gull hovers above the roofs of the old buildings of the Hanseatic merchants. At this time of day, before the rest of Bergen awakes, it is almost possible to imagine this place as it once was: the hustle and bustle of the dockworkers loading and unloading stockfish from the chill north of Norway, or cereals and grain arriving from the south.
We arrived in Bergen by boat, a ferry that took us from the north of Denmark via Stavanger, between the islands and beneath the bridges that link them, until the city appeared, framed by mountains. Is there a better way to approach a port city than by boat? Arrive in Trieste, Izmir or Bergen by boat and you’ll get a very different impression of the city compared with arriving overland. As first impressions go, arriving by boat roots an experience of a port town in the history that shaped it. These are communities which reflect their hinterland to be sure, but above all they are connected to the world. Places that throughout history have been built on communication, on a mix of languages and cultures, and the exchange of goods and ideas.
A few summers ago I walked from the Landungsbrücke pier on the banks of the Elbe in Hamburg, up the hill towards St Pauli and its infamous Reeperbahn. I was walking with my dad and my brother, and we were all walking in the footsteps of my grandfather and his own brother, both of whom were seamen on ships that crossed the Atlantic and the North Sea, and both of whom had spent shore leave on those very streets.
Making connections
I’ve always liked Hamburg, and as with Bergen, I felt a familiarity with the city from the moment I arrived there. Perhaps it is the fact that, when it comes to atmosphere, port cities often have more in common with each other than the other cities in the countries they belong to. Our family is from in and around Liverpool. In Hamburg and Bergen, in Marseille and Genoa, not to mention New York or Cape Town, you will find clues to those old connections, those old ways across the sea that link them.
The international ties, these links across oceans, bind ports together. In a small bar not far from the Reeperbahn that already existed when my grandfather came ashore, I ordered a portion of Labskaus with my beer. A mix of beetroot and corned beef, eggs and pickles, you’ll find a variation of this dish across all the former ports of the Hanseatic League and beyond. In Bergen, it is called Lapskaus. In Liverpool it was a variation of this meal - and every Liverpudlian family has its own recipe - that gave its cityfolk their name.
‘We’re not English, we’re Scouse,’ the Liverpool football fans sing, taking pride in a name and an identity that links them to Hamburg and Bremen, Bergen and Gdańsk.
From the wooden warehouses of Bryggen to the brick buildings of Liverpool’s docks or Hamburg’s Speicherstadt, the very architecture of these cities tells the story of trade and the wealth that built them. But now, some of these buildings have a different purpose, to tell other stories too. In Liverpool, until its recent closure for maintenance, the Maritime Museum charted the history of seafaring in the city behind red brick walls. It also recalls the nine million emigrants who left through Liverpool on their way to a new life in the United States, Canada or Australia.
Close by, the International Slavery Museum told the story of another side of Liverpool’s links to the outside world, a tale of trauma, exploitation and how it shaped the very fabric of the city. Between 1700 and 1807 up to a third of Liverpool’s trade was with Africa and the Caribbean. By the middle of the 18th century, Liverpool was the largest slave trading port in Britain. To walk the city today is to pass buildings financed by the trade in human beings and along streets named for those who made their fortune in that trade: Bold Street and Earle Street. Tarlton Street and Cunliffe Street.
Port cities tell the story of how the world has been interlinked, for good and for evil, for centuries. Some are stories of shame. Others of inspiration. There is the sadness of departure and the joy of arrival. The anticipation of adventure or fear of what to come. For every tale of a successful journey there is one of shipwreck. These are cities that are built on human connection and communication, but also piracy, pillage and slavery. Nothing is straightforward, and perhaps it is this ambivalence which gives such places their specific atmosphere.
Changing fortunes
In Bergen, we walked from Bryggen towards the railway station. Despite the volume of goods that still pass through port cities, not least through the enormous Port of Hamburg, the coming of the railway in the 19th century and then airplanes in the 20th changed forever the nature of travel. But new stories would continue to be written.
In 1928, at the Grand Hotel Terminus by the station in Bergen, Roald Amundsen held what was to be his final press conference. He was about to leave from the harbour on his final expedition. Not by boat, but by seaplane, flying his Latham 47 north to Tromsø before heading out across the Arctic on a rescue mission for his fellow polar explorer Umberto Nobile. Somewhere north of Tromsø, Amundsen’s plane crashed. Although wreckage would later be recovered, the body of the explorer was never found.
The sun beats down on the old harbour in Bergen. Visitors stroll along the water’s edge, passing by market stalls selling fish rolls and elk salami. There’s a cruise ship in town, and it has disgorged thousands of daytrippers, wobbly on their sea legs, for a few hours of exploring. Some locals grumble about the cruise passengers. Others hope for some economic benefit, part of a wider tourism boost.
Port towns and cities were built on trade, on the movement of goods and people. It is this long history and all that comes with it that attracts the contemporary visitor. Some of Europe’s most popular destinations are port cities, whether visitors arrive on planes, trains or even boats. From pints in the sunshine by the Albert Dock in Liverpool to Fischbrötchen on Hamburg’s Landungsbrücke and ice cream in Bryggen, in the 21st century it feels like what these famous ports are now trading in is themselves and the stories that made them.
Paul Scraton
