A search online for the town of Ålesund in Norway will often mention the fact that it’s relatively famous for the prevalence of its Art Nouveau architectural style, and that’s true, broadly speaking, but the specific style you’ll notice is actually called Jugendstil. Could you care any less? Maybe not, but I’m still going to give a brief explanation of it further down in this post so consider that a warning.
But first, the story so far…
We were in Ålesund, the final Norwegian port on our 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland Cruise and we’d spent the morning of this beautiful, sunny, summer day in Norway at first Godøya to see the Alnes Lighthouse, then at Giske to see the white marble church. The afternoon was free time for us to have a bit of a wander around the town, and that’s what you’re going to see in the pictures in this article.
We were dropped off fairly close to where Sky Princess was docked, as you can see below. You’ll also see a shop called Bunnpris which we’d noticed in another port earlier on this cruise. We continued the very adult conversations we’d already had about this retail chain.
“Ooh, Bunnpris! Shall we head in to see what the pris of their bunn is?”
“Excuse me, sir. This bunn. I’m interested in the pris.”
This is one of the many reasons why you never want to go on a cruise with us.
It was to the harbour that we headed because it looked like it would have the prettiest views of Ålesund and the highest probability of getting a drink somewhere. We like to drink local alcohol in local places for the experience when we travel, so don’t judge us. We almost immediately came upon a statue of a young fisherman. It’s one of the staples of ports in Norway that if there’s a tradition of fishing then at some point you’ll find a statue to honour the men (it’s mostly always men) who braved the seas to bring food ashore.
A more aesthetically-pleasing art sculpture (to me) was a little further along the waterfront of Ålesund Harbour; this being one of Harald Grytten, a local historian and former director of the town’s museum who was instrumental in cataloguing the architecture and teaching local history in public. The statue, sculpted by Olaf Leon Roald, is named The Wanderer and was erected in 2013.
We were exceptionally lucky with the weather on our cruise ship visit to Ålesund, as not only did we have beautifully intense blue skies to contrast with the bright colours of the waterfront buildings, but we also had only the faintest of breezes giving us gorgeous reflections on the surface of the water. A great day for attractive photography in Norway. You’ll also see a nice example of a contemporary, abstract, metal sculpture set in Ålesund Square. Sadly, I don’t know anything about it, but I like the look. It’s like a jellyfish went for a swim in a sea of mercury.
Let’s get around to the architecture that Ålesund is famous for. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century Art Nouveau is what you’ll see a lot online, and it’s fine and perfectly correct to describe the style of Ålesund’s buildings in that way, but if you’re feeling a little bit art-snobby then why not berate people by telling them that, as with lots of art movements, there are branches off them and national or local flavours to them on occasion, and that’s the case with this town in Norway where the prevailing architectural style is actually Jugendstil, a style originating in Germany?
So, why would a Norwegian town have an awful lot of buildings designed with an eye towards floral patterns and geometric patterns and naturally-flowing curves and, most importantly, a young, Germanic feel? The answer is Kaiser Wilhelm, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia. It was probably your second guess, if you’re honest with yourself.
In the early hours of the morning of the 23rd January, 1904, a fire broke out in Ålesund that quickly spread thanks to strong winds and the fact that the entire town was built from wood. One person died – a woman who went back into her house to get her purse – while ten thousand residents were forced to flee, mainly on foot with what they could carry, seeking shelter where they could (which wasn’t many places at all). News of the fire spread almost as quickly as the fire itself and the Kaiser sent a telegram of condolences while the fire was still being extinguished. His personal interest in Ålesund was that he had frequently spent time in the region, and he was subsequently one of the first to send aid in the form of shelter materials, food, and medicine.
When Ålesund was rebuilt it was done so with stone, with better facilities, in the early twentieth century style of the times, and, thanks to Kaiser Wilhem’s connection to the town and generosity, with architects that included many from Germany.
We enjoyed more of the views of the town along the harbour front before deciding we’d quite like a drink.
There weren’t a huge amount of places open when we arrived, which we initially thought was weird considering there was a cruise ship in port until we remembered that most of the passengers on cruise ships are as tight as anything and would rather head back aboard to eat and drink than pay anything extra ashore. Not us, though. However, of the first couple of places we looked at we could see they were rammed with people so we ended up at a small pub called Smutthullet a bit further back from the main tourist spot. It felt like a locals pub more than a tourist pub, despite – or maybe because of – the odd scarves above the bar, and it served Norwegian beers, so we stayed for a couple and divested ourselves of money into the local economy.
All that remained was to simply walk back to the ship. There were many other things we could have done in Ålesund with some more time to hand: there’s an aquarium, and we like aquariums; there’s the museum which would have told us more about the history and the architecture; there’s also the hike up the hill for the views over the town that would have seen my wife kill me had I even suggested it. We might do one or two of those the next time we hit this part of Norway, though.
In the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll wave goodbye to Ålesund from Sky Princess, and goodbye to Norway too as we sail away and head towards our favourite European country, Iceland, on a cruise ship for the first time.