Bergen Part IV: Where Musicians Live

This is the fourth in a four part series on my trip to Bergen, on Norway's west coast. If you'd like to start over at the beginning, you can find the first post here:
http://kristofergoestonorway.blogspot.no/2012/07/bergen-part-1-go-west-young-man.html

On Saturday, our last day on the west coast, we had two stops to make, visiting the homes of Norway's two most famous musicians, both of whom called Bergen home during their lifetimes.

If you remove the Russian Orthodox turret and the
Arabian porch, it's a classic Norwegian home...

Our first stop took us on a short ferry ride to the island home of the violinist Ola Bull. While he is almost forgotten outside of Norway these days, at the height of his popularity, Ola Bull may have been the most famous violinist in the world. He was immensely talented and accumulated fabulous wealth on account of it, which he promptly spent on things like a private island and founding a colony in America (a fact which I alone in our tour group knew, thanks to the honorable Todd Nichol). He was also an expert showman, early in his career paying women to faint at his concerts, whereupon he would venture down into the audience to revive them. Later on in his career, the women would do the fainting without being paid, at some points even lining up outside his hotel to purchase his bath water.

A portrait of the artist as a young man

His career as a violin virtuoso aside, he is notable in Norwegian (and art history) as the discoverer of not only Henrik Ibsen, but Edvard Grieg. In fact, Ola Bull was responsible for Grieg's parents sending him to Leipzig to study.

Don't tell anyone, but seeing this jellyfish may have been
my favorite part of the tour.

Speaking of Edvard Grieg, his house, known as Troldhaugen, was our second stop. Here again we toured the artist's house and learned many things about him. For instance, he was a small man, 5' 2" tall, married his cousin, and had a rubber frog he would carry around and rub before every concert. His eccentricities aside, Edvard Grieg may be the most world famous Norwegian, known especially for the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play, Peer Gynt. Even if people don't know Grieg's name, they are sure to recognize the theme from his piece "In the Hall of the Mountain King", which describes a scene where the main character, Peer Gynt, is chased around by the troll children of the Mountain King, whose daughter Peer Gynt has tried to abscond with. We didn't spend much time at Grieg's house (like the man himself, it was quite small), and so afterwards we headed back to our hotel to say our goodbyes to Bergen and prepare for the long bus ride back to Oslo.

Edvard Grieg and I. The statue is life-sized, so you can see,
he was no Nordic giant.