Bergen

Bergen - darkometer rating : 1 - Norway 's "second city" (after the capital Oslo ) and a famously beautiful one too, so that no comprehensive trip to the country can afford to do without including it. For the dark tourist there are only a few comparatively minor attractions, but at least one of them is pretty unique. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Bergen is Norway 's second-largest city, but at a mere quarter of a million inhabitants it is hardly a metropolis. In contrast to the modern capital Oslo , it feels cosier and small-town-like in the centre around the old harbour, which is where most tourists will spend almost all their time in Bergen. This is also the nucleus from which Bergen evolved historically. History in the case of Bergen primarily means: the Hanseatic League. From the 13th century on and up to the late 18th century, the city was one of the key trading posts of this once mighty commercial network – the first "globalized" or at least "multinational conglomerate", so to speak. All the lucrative trade with northern Norway – i.e. in particular its valuable stockfish – went through Bergen. Bergen was the northernmost outpost (a "Kontor", to give it the technical Hanseatic term) of the powerful Hanseatic trade and defence network, which had its main seats all along the Baltic coast between Lübeck in Germany to Gdansk in (today's) Poland and all the way east to Novgorod in Russia . It also stretched along the North Sea coast from England (e.g. Kings Lynn) and Holland in the west to what became the largest of the Hanseatic Cities, Hamburg , in the east. Hamburg was thus the Hanseatic centre of gravity, as it were.