Proud, solid and the best in his own eyes. The Bergen man finally received an accurate diagnosis.

Wondering why Bergen is so special? Now you can blame Oslo for sure.

The answer is: Oslo.

The capital, this money-flight monster, this machine of arrogant bureaucratic and political bushes, this provocative bastard of a city, is what mainly defines Bergen residents.

It is Oslo that makes Bergen the patriotic outpost of Norway, the country’s only imaginary city-state, the most beautiful self-deception in the Nordic region.

But what exactly was the question?

Fuck. The Bergeners are so far off the national model for normal Norwegian self-perception that several hundred years of literary introspection has not provided complete clarity on why we have become who we are.

The texts of promising people like Ludvig Holberg, Willy Dahl and Georg Johannesen are not enough.

The hunger for knowledge about us and our origins still gnaws on Bergen’s body. That is why the book “Bergenseren – a historical analysis” comes as a gift in a rather sad year.

Author and History professor Morten Hammerborg has written a wonderful diagnosis of the most stubborn herd in the nation.

The book is comprehensive, analytical, and also very well written.

But above all, it is a systematic review of historical sources, literature and wild events that have made Bergen a demographic outcrop in its own country.

Could be because Hammerborg itself is from Bergen? Undoubtedly. He admits that he also wrote it to understand himself. This is how most people from Bergen:

Eternally in love with the idea of ​​the exotic Bergenian difference, but at the same time deeply in doubt as to whether love has really qualified.

For the rest of the country, Bergen is a parody of itself. But at the same time, the city is the object of a fascination and an ill-concealed envy that manifests itself in constant curiosity.

As Hammerborg writes: “To be from Bergen is to live with the notions of Bergen close to life.”

I remind myself From my two useless years as a student in Oslo, the expectations that ran through the room when “Mini-Steinfeld”, as someone called me, was going to open his mouth. They thought that all the people of Bergen spoke like NRK veteran Hans Wilhelm Steinfeld.

It continued throughout, this double vision of the Bergen man as an erratic verbal monster and a harmless poodle patriot at the same time.

I reached the peak of Oslo when an accomplished colleague from East Norway asked me, “Can’t you swear a little by us then? It’s so innmari koschli ‘when you Bergen swear.

The outer cabinet has its explanatory origin. Among other things, the fact that Bergen was the largest city in the country for 700 years. The main reason for this was that the city was halfway between the Lofoten fishing and the markets of Germany and the Netherlands.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Bergen grew fat with this profession, promoted by the Hanseatic theater and other know-it-alls from the mentioned countries.

Bergen became a European city, having very little contact with what was east of the great mountains. He developed his own dialect, humor, and piercing sense of irony and self-praise.

There are important years that explain why things turned out the way they were.

1294 is one of the years that is rarely talked about here in the city. So King Eirik II Magnusson decided that German merchants were not allowed to go further north to Norway than to Bergen.

He wanted to ensure control of the ever-growing fishing traffic. This made Bergen the economic center of the entire Norwegian coast and consolidated its role as the most important city in the country for the next several centuries.

What if the king had established the trade frontier in Trondheim? Or Stavanger? Horrible.

Bergen lived long fat of his privileges. Until the glorious year 1814.

For the rest of Norway, it was an ecstatic farewell to 400 years of Danish rule and cheers for a new constitution. For Bergen, 1814 was a disaster.

Hammerborg vividly recounts how the need for a new national capital became urgent. The shame for the gray group of houses behind the Akershus fortress was great. He needed a serious face lift to fulfill his new role.

The need to The transformation of Old Christiania provided an unprecedented flood of historic buildings, fully funded by the state. This caused the city to grow like a mushroom colony, and in just a couple of decades it grew larger than Bergen.

For the people of Bergen, the demotion to state number two was totally humiliating.

The fact that this state cure against doping for Oslo has lasted for more than 200 years does not improve matters.

And there it is the core of Hammerborg’s message. It is life in the shadow of Oslo that has reinforced and amplified Bergen’s convulsions over the notion of itself as a privileged European city-state.

We constantly deny that Oslo is the nation’s capital and therefore we expect the same privileges. Therefore, we are also condemned to live in disappointment and anger at “discrimination”.

Can the idea of Bergen survive? Is there a place for such uniqueness in an increasingly suburbanized city, in a slippery and globalized world?

Hammerborg believes it is possible. “Bergen will only die the day that we Bergen residents no longer cultivate the idea of ​​Bergen as something much greater and nobler than reality dictates,” he writes in his thoughtful epilogue.

I think so the crop will live until Ulriken falls.

As long as Brann plays football, as long as Oslo remains the capital, as long as the city’s children feel nostalgic for Bergen with school meals, Bergen will be Bergen.

Furthermore, we are better to cheer ourselves up. Therefore, it was obvious that we would celebrate the 950 years of the city in 2020.

Both the municipality and the cultural institutions had planned a moderate marking, both in the city center and in marginalized neighborhoods. In the manner of Erkeberg, this plan also became too petty for prominent people in Bergen.

Former speaker And the industrial Herman Friele’s reaction to the anniversary ambitions is the gist of everything in Hammerborg’s book:

“We cannot celebrate the city with four torches in Landås!” He declared.

In other words: we will have fireworks, a floss hat, and a march. Every holiday should be a celebration of Bergen’s exceptionalism, remoteness from the rest of the country, and the grayishness of the Gerhard family.

Well the anniversary was defeated by a certain virus, which in a brutal way tells us that Bergen is not only “naked in itself”, but above all it is part of a highly real world.

Therefore, Morten Hammerborg’s book will be the most important contribution to the anniversary year and to the understanding of who we really are.

And there it will probably remain until Bergen turns 1,000 in 50 years.