Everyone who visits Bergen walks around the old harbour and admires the colourful German merchant Hanseatic League giant wooden warehouses and their shops. Not everyone explores the alleyways behind the gabled fronted waterside entrances. They are missing a treat. You step back in time.

You can imagine workmen carrying goods, to and from the visiting ships and the warehouses, using these alleys. Strange shaped protrudences stick out the side of the buildings. They are normally covers for external staircases which are essential to help keep the winter rain and cold out of the unheated buildings.

You will also see bridges and flights of stairs that extend between two buildings. This helped the warehouse men transport goods from one store room to another without having to go back down to the street level and back up again. At the top of the buildings, sticking out of the warehouse roof structure at the side, are small triangular gables that house the pulley systems. These would enable porters to hook a sack or box of merchandise to the end of a rope and haul it to the top floor of the warehouse.

You can see what an old merchants house, his office and warehouse would have looked like 500 years ago at the Hanseatic Museum. I loved the preserved sleeping quarters. No fires were allowed in the warehouses even in winter because of the fire risk. That also included candles so everyone went to bed when it got dark and woke as soon as it was dawn.

The beds were all in enclosed wooden cupboards with sliding doors to keep out the cold and keep any body heat in. There is also the remains of an original merchants house from the 1300's found on an archaeological dig. It was interesting to find out that the trading power and wealth of Bergen made it the capital of Norway for over six hundred years. In the summer you can go on a guided tour of the Warehouse district with a Museum guide. Tickets can

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