User:Aqwis/Bergen

is the second-largest city in Norway, and a municipality in the county of Hordaland. On January 1, 2008, Bergen had a population of 247,746, of which 223,600 lived in the Bergen urban area. The city is thought to have been founded in 1070 by king Olav Kyrre, and was the capital of Norway until 1299. Bergen was the largest city in the Nordic region in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the largest city in Norway until the 1830s, when it was passed by the capital, Oslo.

Located in Hordaland in Western Norway, it is situated on a peninsula which it shares with the municipalities of Os and Samnanger. The eastern part of the municipality consists mainly of mountaineous areas, while the main body of the city is located in the west and north-west. The city centre is located between a group of mountains and peaks called "the Seven Mountains", although the city extends far to the north, south and west of its centre.

As the educational centre of its region, Bergen contains a variety of educational institutions, including the University of Bergen, the country's third largest university. The city's hospital, Haukeland University Hospital has 8500 employees, making it the largest employer in the city and Western Norway as a whole. As in the rest of Scandinavia, most people are today employed in the service industry, although the secondary sector of industry has traditionally held this position, especially the many shipyards.

Early

 * Name

Modern

 * City expansion
 * Sister cities
 * Future expansion


 * Coat-of-arms (wherever it fits in)

Geography

 * Pollution (e.g. Danmarks plass)
 * Mountains
 * Lakes
 * Fjords
 * Surrounding municipalities

Climate

 * Hatlestad
 * Climate change
 * Flooding

Economy

 * Agriculture (one of the largest agricultural municipalities in Hordaland)

Tourism

 * Number of tourists annually, which months are most popular, etc.
 * How much money they leave in the city's economy
 * Cruise tourism (important cruise port, increasing)
 * Charter flights (from Japan - BT, BA)
 * Debate around the tourist attractions (e.g. the closure of Ulriksbanen, torget, etc.)
 * Surveys about what the tourists most liked about their stay - architecture and atmosphere, not the main tourist attractions (BT, BA)

Transportation

 * How many percent of the work force use x method to commute to work
 * Cycling ("worst city in Norway to be a cyclist in" - BT, BA)

Road network

 * Most busy roads
 * Motorways
 * Ulrikstunnelen
 * Ring roads
 * New Sotra bridge

Public transportation

 * Bus network
 * Tram network (until 1965)
 * Bergen Light Rail

Demographics

 * Commuting
 * Crime
 * Urban areas
 * Population growth (least growing of Norway's large cities)

Cityscape

 * Landmark buildings
 * Neighbourhoods (mainly in the city centre; "strøk")

Boroughs

 * Borough administrations were closed, then reopened
 * Criticism about the borough administration representatives
 * Compared to Oslo's boroughs
 * Growth of each borough (BT, BA)
 * Description of each borough?

Architecture

 * Residential architecture
 * "White wooden houses"
 * Controversial architecture
 * City hall

Administration

 * Parliamentarism
 * List of recent mayors in a right-aligned inline table?

Elections

 * Trends (more H-voters than the rest of the country, e.g.)
 * Perhaps last election in a right-aligned inline table?
 * Overview of larger periods when specific parties controlled the gov.

Culture
A variety of newspapers are published in Bergen. First published in 1868, Bergens Tidende is the largest newspaper published in the city, the fourth largest newspaper in Norway, and the largest outside Oslo. The second largest is Bergensavisen, originally founded as "Bergens Arbeiderblad" in 1927. As opposed to Bergens Tidende, a regional newspaper which also covers news from Sogn og Fjordane and Hordaland outside Bergen, BA is a local newspaper and as such covers only news relevant to Bergen and the immediately surrounding municipalities. The circulation of Bergensavisen is rapidly declining; from 2006 to 2007, it dropped from 30,719 to 29,311 (-4 %). In the same period, the circulation of Bergens Tidende increased from 87,076 to 87,668 (+0.7 %).

A variety of smaller, more geographically or topically specific newspapers are also published in Bergen. Dagen, the second oldest newspaper based in Bergen, is a Christian daily newspaper with a daily circulation of 9,033 in 2007. In 2008, Dagen merged with Magazinet, known for publishing Jyllands-Posten's controversial Muhammad cartoons. Since January 2008, the newspaper is published under the name "Dagen Magazinet". Many of Bergen's boroughs have their own newspapers, several of which are owned by Bergens Tidende.


 * TV2
 * Venues
 * Philharmonic orchestra
 * Religion

Sports

 * Brann
 * Other football teams
 * Youth sports (mainly the popularity of it, no specific clubs unless extraordinary)
 * Handball, basketball, etc.
 * Surveys on popularity of the sports among the general public

Education

 * Schools
 * Universities
 * Merger of the various universities/u. colleges

Dialect
"Bergensk", or the "Bergen dialect", is the dialect of Norwegian spoken in Bergen. It is easy for Norwegians to recognise, as it is very distinguishable from the other dialects in Hordaland. Like almost all Norwegian dialects, Bergensk cannot be said to be either Bokmål or Nynorsk. While the vocabulary shows many traits of both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it has many characteristics that are not covered by any of these written languages.

Foreigners, such as the Low German speaking merchants of the Hanseatic League who lived in Bergen in the period from about 1350 to 1750, has had a profound impact on the dialect. Bergen being the major Norwegian city during the Dano-Norwegian union from 1536 to 1814 led to Bergensk absorbing more of the Danish than other Norwegian dialects. Many, but not all, influences from these languages since spread from Bergen to parts of or the whole of Norway.

The female grammatical gender disappeared in the 16th century, probably due to influence from Danish, making Bergensk one of the very few dialects in Norway with only two grammatical genders. All others, excepting sociolects in other Norwegian cities, have three. The Rs are uvular trills, as in French. It probably spread to Bergen (and Kristiansand) some time in the 18th century, overtaking the alveolar trill in the time span of 2 to 3 generations. Due to an improved literacy rate, Bergensk was influenced by riksmål and bokmål in the 19th and 20th centuries. This led to large parts of the German-inspired vocabulary disappearing and pronunciations shifting slightly towards East Norwegian.