Norway in October?" My friends from the Côte d'Azur tap their temples. "Do you want to get depressed? You'd better come down to Monaco. We have to transfer a yacht."
The offer sounds good, but the new territory is tempting. Norway is currently preparing to bring more large yachts to the far north. "Superyacht Norway" is the name of the organisation founded specifically for this purpose, and Ola Hiis Bergh is its marketing frontman. And contrary to all fears, the former tourism director of Bergen welcomes us to his home country - one of the rainiest cities in Europe (240 days a year) - in bright sunshine. "I think the country wants to advertise itself," he says in flawless German, smiles and gets the programme off to a flying start - we can only stay a few days, but we want to see as much as possible.
On the journey into the city, Hiis Bergh briefly explains the history of Superyacht Norway. The association, which is financed by various agencies and restaurants and primarily lobbies for the sparsely populated destination (5.2 million inhabitants on 385,000 square kilometres), is just two years old. "I laid the foundations for this," explains our driver, "almost unconsciously during my time as tourism director." When the cruise industry in Europe was still in its infancy, Hiis Bergh founded "Cruise Norway", an association of ports and harbours, in order to better present themselves to the shipping companies, which would then send their ships north and not just to the Mediterranean. "The initiative has been extremely successful and has probably brought hundreds of thousands of additional tourists to Norway," says Hiis Bergh, who after his retirement - the man is now over 80 years old! - continues to work as a cruise consultant. The enquiry from Inge Halstensen from Bekkjarvik, around 25 nautical miles south of Bergen, finally gets the superyacht issue rolling. Halstensen would also like to profit from the cruise boom with his hotel and adjoining restaurant.
However, the facility turns out to be too small for the ships, which are now very voluminous and sometimes carry many thousands of passengers. "There's no capacity here for more than 500 guests," summarises Hiis Bergh. However, he suggests an alternative to the visibly disappointed Halstensen: Large yachts could very well be accommodated here. Halstensen - perhaps a little more reserved in nature than the average Norwegian - is said to have literally cheered, promised Hiis Bergh all support, but also made it a condition that Halstensen would take care of building a certain infrastructure. "With just one sentence," says Hiis Bergh, "I basically had a new job."
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