Question 1

Berlevåg on Your Own

Accepted Answer

Berlevåg is a village of under 900 people, and an independent visit here is a walk around the inner harbor and, if there is time, a look inside the Harbour Museum. Check the time ashore in your daily program first, because it decides how far you can go. The Harbour Museum: The museum, at Havnegata 19, sits in the old harbor-authority buildings on the east side of the inner harbor. A film upstairs shows how the breakwaters were built. Opening times: To check the museum's opening times, phone it on +47 47 51 11 17 before you go. The locomotive shed: One of the museum buildings holds a brightly painted locomotive of the type that worked on the harbor construction after the war. Getting back on time: Be back at the ship by the time posted on board. It will not wait for passengers who are ashore on their own.

Question 2

Tipping and Currency

Accepted Answer

Tipping is optional in Norway, because restaurant bills generally already include service. If service was outstanding, rounding up the bill or adding about 5 to 10 percent is a common guide. In a taxi, rounding up to a round figure or leaving a little extra is plenty. Norway's currency is the krone (NOK).

Question 3

The Choir and the Village

Accepted Answer

Berlevåg's men's choir became known across Norway through the 2001 documentary Cool and Crazy. The village also appears in Karen Blixen's story Babette's Feast. The land around Berlevåg is mostly rock and tundra, and no trees grow here naturally. The whitewashed church, with about 300 seats, was consecrated in December 1960, replacing the church lost in the war. A memorial stone to those who fell in the war stands in a small park, chosen as the municipality's millennium site.

Question 4

History

Accepted Answer

For most of the 20th century, Berlevåg's story was a fight to build a safe harbor on an exposed coast. The retreating Germans burned the village to the ground in 1944, and the people who came back rebuilt it where it stood. A prayer house becomes a church: In 1877, when about 240 people lived here all year, the council in Tana, which then governed Berlevåg, voted to ask for the prayer house to become a church. A municipality of its own: Berlevåg was split from Tana and became a municipality on 1 January 1914. The breakwaters: Work on the first breakwater began in 1913, and four were in place by the mid-1970s. A storm in 1959 wrecked half of the Svartoksen breakwater, after which the outer breakwaters were armored with concrete tetrapods. The fire of 1928: On 27 June 1928, 50 to 60 houses burned and 400 people lost their homes. The occupation: German forces set up a coastal battery here in May 1942, with five 14.5 cm guns, and built the airfield with the labor of hundreds of Russian prisoners of war. Burned in 1944: Berlevåg was the first place in Finnmark where the retreating Germans used scorched-earth tactics, and in November 1944 they burned almost every building and forced the residents out. Many hid in caves and other hiding places, and afterwards some sheltered under upturned boats. Staying put: The government wanted to move the community to Kongsfjord, which had a better harbor. The residents refused, and with no timber to hand they rebuilt many houses from the planks of the German runway. Ships at the quay: Until the steamship quay was finished in 1974, people and goods were carried out to the coastal ships in a small cargo boat. That boat, known as the Pramma, is now kept by the museum. To learn more ashore: The Berlevåg Harbour Museum at Havnegata 19, on the east side of the inner harbor, covers the harbor works, the war and the burning, and upstairs it has a reconstructed fishing-village home from the 1930s and 1940s.

Berlevag

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Where Ships Dock

Berlevåg on Your Own

Tipping and Currency

The Choir and the Village

History

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