Culture Night 2: Last night photos

will post photos and a few videos of culture night last night. I only got a few, as it was raining on and off, but you´ll get a little flavour of what it was like around the city last night. (See previous posts for what all there was all over the city. I chose quite a few things, from the endless list of choices). I had a great time!

Got into the city about 7pm, at the bus station. There is only one bus station or bus terminal, and the city is quite compact so it´s fairly easy to walk around in the main central areas, aka sentrum. I walked from the bus station, across the road past the library, past the train station, then to the left about five minutes, along one of the narrow back streets. The sidewalk, narrow, about 3 feet wide, is cobbled or flat pieces of slates in different thicknesses, sizes, some a bit wibbly. On either side of the sidewalk is a narrow two lane road on the right with another similar sidewalk and older buildings on that side, or to the immediate left as you walk you can touch the bottoms of the charmingly old-fashioned traditional rooftops that go from about 4 feet off the ground to a steeply pitched point then back down again along the other side, maybe at a different length. Round the corner is a tiny hidden gate, or an almost hidden arch into a large hidden courtyard, or an actual door directly off the main church, in where you can enter into what is the old Leprosy Hospital or St George´s church of the old Leprosy Hospital. 

The area backs into, or fronts onto, depending upon which way you are situated, what I call the Marken area. Cobblestoned streets and alleyways, tiny and narrow and even more narrow down to a hands width apart. At night candle-lit, or barely lit by the hazy low lit old lantern type of lights. Tiny bistos, cafes, bars, small shops selling woolens or nothing but pasta and olives and cheeses. Small clothing stores, old cafes with single apartments or storage above. Very charming area. 

 


                                                                                     

Back to the Courtyard, the way I finally chose to enter. Immediately from the main entrance is a narrow entrance rectangular front room, with the main building to the left, or the kitchen areas to the right. Cloak room, walls of wooden doored and iron keyed flat cupboard doors, floor to ceiling to wall to wall. Floors of miscellaneous mix of flat varied black and black-grey slates and a little sand. Huge stone, deep, tall cavernous fireplaces. Some fitted with huge iron stoves, with tiny numerous intricate iron doors covering where the various fires were kept. Stove top also black iron, with holes and black iron circles of lids unto which huge heavy iron pots and huge heavy lids, or tiny delicate definitely used copper pots of all sizes sit. Iron tools of all sorts hang from iron hooks. A flue disappears into the huge high cave like chimney overhead. Beautiful! Picturesque, out of a castle fantasy of how perfect things might have been, in the idyllic setting, surrounded directly outside by a charming, tiny beautiful city, sea, harbour and forested mountain a few minutes away! But, it wasn´t so charming, or so perfect.

(poem, by whom. Need to go back to see. Think I took a photo. Says it well...describes the idyllic charming Little Bergen, as it was then called...then ends with the so unexpected horrors of the leprosy disease overtaking the city and its people).

Walking past the main tiny entrance back to the left side again, is the main building, the main hospital. Inside is reminescent of being inside a New Orleans French Quarter courtyard hotel, except in wood not wrought iron. The room is long narrow, two storey, with rooms leading directly off. Each room is tiny enough for two tiny wood beds slightly wider than a person, shorter than now as people were shorter back then. Between the beds, a tiny wood cupboard side board with cubby space and tiny drawer. A candle in a hand held candle holder. The window covered with a tiny screen made from thin linen tacked around some thin sticks of carved wood nailed together, or either a similar type of curtain hanging from a tiny wood dowel from tiny hooks. The rooms must have been cold, as the windows were thin glass, the floorboards and walls though thick had tiny spaces through out. Some of the rooms were furnished as such. Most held long white cloth reminders of leprosy, info sheets hanging from two walls ceilings, in front of the door and to the left, the third was from the right wall with a photo of an actual person who had leprosy. The info was about that person. Each room had a different person. One room had a huge black paper framed. Looking closer you could barely make out the tiniest font, which you realized was names of those who had died. Thousands of names in white tiniest font barely readable, covering this huge black space. 

One room had a glass case of hands, in various stages of leprosy. First hand was puffy with bloody tears and tiny rips of skin. Second hand puffier, fingers slightly shorter. Third hand fingers nearly gone, not bloody at all, just puffy like someone had made a balloon of a hand.

Along the second storey, after walking up a narrow winding tiny wood steep staircase, was a narrow walkway on three sides of the rectangular room, just like in a New Orleans French Quarter hotel courtyard area, but in wood not iron. The wood was like a flat fence, with delicate fancy cut work similar to gingerbread wood work, painted with rosemaling traditional decorative painting designs. Similar rooms ever few feet, all along the walls. Each room had its own window. Windows with two openable panes in wooden frames, with tiny iron locks and door handles. Similar to what is still used today in homes. 

The rooms were very dim once the sunlight was gone. They did not light the rooms or buildings here much, to show how dim it was. This room had some of the medicines and medical equipment used at the time to try to help cure or prevent the disease of leprosy.

In one area off this main area, which lead to the church, was a larger one room, with  tall narrow extremely intricately detailed iron fireplace, with detailed gingerbread like cutwork in the iron doors and air vents, going from ceiling to floor. A woman was on her cellphone for so long, standing in front of this, that finally politely I had to ask her to please move:) so I could take a photo,).

Next to this in the opposite corner nearby, was a tiny room with what was a toilet. Like an indoor outhouse. Tall square wood cabin like box, topped with a board top, with a tiny hinged insert board, where you would sit, to use the " toilet". The room was completely pitch black, but I tried getting a few photos. When I was little,I remember using my grans outhouse in the US, it was an actual outhouse in the middle of a field in the middle of nothing nowhere near the main house, and scared the heck out of me every time  I used it! Either from worry I´d fall in, or be bitten by some poisonous snake! In summertime I still thought it was scary! In winter it was absolutely freezing, surrounded by snow, difficult to get into, or shut the door. In summer it was steamy hot, didn´t smell much though as by then there was an actual bathroom of course in the main house which most used, but I wanted to try the outhouse. In summer the weeds were taller than me, and I had to walk through them to get to the outhouse. Newspaper hung inside, not to read, to use!,). The toilet area was higher than a usual toilet, and difficult to get up to. There was no fancy kids sized area, just the one that everyone used! 

And, just to be clear, this room was pitch black! The seat was very high off the ground, and narrow. The only reason the photo looks so light is I had to use the flash, or either have a totally pitch black photo! It was very scary, and I was only taking a photo---I was mighty glad there was an actual toilet, albeit in nearly in as tiny a space as this, in another section of the building! It was obviously clean, now I can actually see what I was touching, but it was creepy and icky having to reach into this pitch black space being able to see nothing but knowing it was a toilet, and having to touch the edge of the wooden partition to flip it up quickly with as little touching as possible for the photo, then down again! ick. I kept worrying something would come out of the loo, and I could not see what was down there but it seemed deep, either empty or full, but either in the dark was a bad option for what might be lurking in there. A bit like one of those horror movies, waiting to happen! haha 

I have several books on the history of loos, potties, privies, outhouses and such, so am quite interested when finding them. I´ve searched them out in various places and countries, castles, and ordinary homes. The castles were most fascinating---having had the luxury of pretending to try them out before certain castle renovations, I can not imagine having to use the toilet six stories up, directly over nothing, with a huge breeze flying up into the toilet from below, then all of whatever you did falling down below into the river, where the washing was done, and water was gathered for cooking. The caste toilet areas were all stone, atleast the ones I saw. The renovations were done in wood, so maybe it was both or whatever they could use. Either way, very interesting, to me! Just slightly better in a lighted situation,)

This inside water closet, and I can see how it gets that name now, as it was exactly like a broom closet, had a fancy door which left no clue as to what it might lead too. Stairs I had thought, wrongly. The box was about waist height, with one hole. I´ve seen others, in various countries, which had three, or a long length of numerous holes very close in public toilets which seem very intrusive by todays standards, with no dividers or anything, just a long board with holes. Others, were a mix of adult sized areas, with smaller shorter areas for children. 

Our first winter together here in Norway, T took me to through the snowy woods of surrounding Oslo area, to winter hytte (winter cabins) with huge open space with huge fireplace, steamy wet saunas, kitchens, bedrooms with bunks like camping, etc. It was lovely! And we ended up all alone in the huge building, in the middle of snowy winter, surrounded by woods, as for some reason that was not a weekend anyone else had wanted to come out. It was very romantic! The toilets were in a clean, modern version of outhouse cabins, a good walk from the main building, through the snow. Whenever I had to use the toilet (it was just toilets, not anything else), I had to get fully dressed in winter clothes, boots, coat etc the works, then quickly walk out in the snow, only barely seeable as the moonlight reflected off all the white snow, to the toilet outhouse cabin. There was thin newspaper like toilet paper, and something similar to softer thicker toilet paper. It was very clean, did not smell at all, but a little scary walking back and forth in the middle of the night,)! T came with me the first time of course,)

Back to the Leprosy Museum/Old hospital.


Following directly off the room where the WC and fireplace were, looking directly up, was a high narrow space on either side of the entrance into was was the back of the church, St. George´s church.

Stepping from either room, leading off this fireplace room, was a beautiful double wooden carved door leading into an extremely narrow and vastly tall space, which you realize is the space behind the church´s pulpit. As you walk around, you are in the back of the church, surrounded in a huge log-cabin type of building with the huge substantial rustic squared off and rounded off logs showing great details of carpentry, including wood nails, mortis and tenons, wood buttresses on a simple scale, wood porticos on a simple basic scale, detailed intricate carved angel cherubs above the wood bench areas. Beautiful! And breathtaking, the amount of work even on such a simple scale--the main supports alone were a great expanse for being just one tree each. The amount of human power it took to get that building up was incredible! Probably today they might have used machines to help, but back then it was men and sheer blood, sweat and tears, talent, and willpower to erect these massive yet small buildings! The architecture and carpentry alone are worth a visit, if you like such things, and I do. I find the Norwegian architectural details incredibly fascinating, interesting and spectacular! Even on such a simple basic scale as this building, still very pretty, could have stayed hours more investigating more features.

At one point whilst there, 4 university students possibly from Grieg academy?, set up their music on stands, and played a lovely flute concert of classical music for us. Spectacular! The acoustics in the building, in the area they chose were good, especially in the relatively small confined space, low rounded wood ceiling, even though there was not much to hold in the sound, or that the entire space was nothing but wood, no soft furnishing such as carpets, or tapestries hanging from anywhere. Very fine concert! As I was leaving I told them in Norwegian thanks for playing for us, and how pretty they played.

The wood pews where we sat to hear the free flute concert. 

The actual entrance at the opposite side of this church mainstay was another inside tiny entrance, with a huge tall carved double door (me looking from the inside) with iron pulls, iron door bell pulls, and other interesting features including a tiny hand carved into the inside door handle pull. Reminded me of Cambridge UK buildings. And there is another building near by along the Museum Alle´ which has similar door handles of actual hands. 

On either side of this entrance, was a narrow, extremely narrow on one side, double door with the traditional warped undulating glass. One side inside had an extremely extremely narrow, continually more narrow winding spiral wood staircase up to the pews above. No railing. The other side was something else, but I can´t recall what. 

Every door had a lock and key. This one had a chained key, which seems a great idea to prevent a lost key! Every home I´ve ever lived in outside the US, had endless keys, nearly all of them slightly different and not easily copied. Each door  had a key, similar to this, each main door, each door to any outbuilding, the windows had keys. Etc. This building had hundreds of  keys, including closets, doors, windows. When I was on the ships the other day, all of them had so many keys! It´s a wonder they do not get lost, without being chained! 

Some of the tiny rooms, and how they might have typically been furnished. Simply, sparely. Though I think they of course had more linens and woolen blankets, or so I hope, as it would have been very cold, even in summer, at night without more than this! If you can not tell, the floors are even in here, not wooded or heated as is normal nowadays, but sheets of black or grey black slates, laid like tile.

One of the screens of linen, used like a privacy curtain

Tiny locked wood chest, painted with typical rosemaling designs

More of the simple railings, which reminds me of the courtyard and upper patio areas of New Orleans French Quarter, albeit in wood rather than wrought iron. All the wood areas were painted with some type of faded rosemaling or stenciling.

Another one of the many tiny rooms, furnished simply with white linens, a few paintings, few possessions

I spent another half hour or so looking around, then a half hour walking around from there out the back way, two different ways parallel to find a few other things in the general area, along Marken and around the main lake at the museum galleries, at the Fortress, fishmarket Bryggen areas. It was raining, and many of the concerts had already begun, so I did not wish to be rude to take photos or videos inside, or outside in the rain!