Fish, Fiords, Falls, and Forests (continued)

THE “fishiest” city in the World is in Norway on a fiord. The city and the fiord are both called Bergen. The fishermen from the Lofoden Is-lands and the fiords bring their catches to Bergen—boatloads of big fish and little fish, thick fish and thin fish, white fish and black fish—to sell and to ship everywhere.

Bergen is also another “est” besides the “fishiest.” It is the wettest city in Europe. People carry umbrellas or raincoats all the time, for you scarcely ever see the sun, and when it is not raining it is getting ready to. It takes a lot of rain, if caught in a bucket, to make as much as an inch deep of water. Perhaps you have seen it rain so hard that the streets were flooded and at the crossings the rain has been over your shoe tops, but probably it has rained less than an inch in any one spot, such as in a bucket. Of course, when rain runs off the roof and pours down on to the street the water has run together from a large space, but very few cities have a rainfall of more than a few feet in a whole year. Bergen however has a rainfall of six feet in a year. This is enough rain to drown every man, woman, and child in the city if it all came down at once, but fortunately it does not.

As nearly every family in America has an automobile, nearly every family in Norway has a boat. The Norwegians always have been famous sailors.

Long, long ago the Norwegian sailors were called Vikings, which, however, does not mean Vi-“kings,” but “Vik”-ings, and that means “fiordmen.” One of the greatest of these Vikings was a man named Leif, son of Eric, called Leif Ericson.