Bergen
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Bergen. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
berg'en, a city on the western coast of Norway, 186 miles northwest of Christiania. It occupies an amphitheater at the head of a deep fiord twenty-five miles from the open sea, and is surrounded by rocky hills from 500 to 2,000 feet high. This city is sheltered. The climate is mild, with an annual rainfall of over seventy inches. Most of the houses are built of hewed logs, giving the town quite an alpine appearance. A market place, several churches, and a cathedral are worth seeing. A library of 50,000 volumes, a theater, a museum, and other institutions afford pleasure and instruction during the long winter months. The shipbuilders of the Clyde obtain timber from Bergen. Its merchants ship dried fish, herrings, tar, lumber, fish oil, and hides in exchange for flour, groceries, and clothing. At one time the Hanseatic League had an agency here and monopolized trade until expelled by the Norwegians in 1558. Their old building is still used as a warehouse. Bergen is the second city of Norway. The population in 1901 was reported officially at 72,179; 80,000 was claimed in 1905. In the latter year the Bergen fleet numbered 281 steamships and 76 sailing vessels. See Norway
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a seaport on the W. coast of Norway, the second town of the kingdom, about 25 miles from the open sea, on a bay of the Byfiord, which forms a safe harbor. The town is well built, with cathedral, museum, etc. The trade is large, timber, tar, train oil, cod liver oil, hides, and particularly dried fish (stock fish) being exported in return for corn, wine, brandy, coffee, cotton, woolens. and sugar. It is the second largest port of Norway, its imports and exports in 1917 totalling almost 400,- 000,000 kroner. In 1445 a factory was established here by the Hanseatic cities of Germany. Pop. about 90,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both entries measure Bergen against "Christiania" — a city that ceased to exist under that name in 1925, when the Norwegian capital reverted to Oslo. Bergen is still the country's second city, but its population has grown from the 90,000 Collier's reported in 1921 to roughly 290,000 in the municipality today, and the dried fish, tar and train oil the old accounts list have been overtaken by farmed salmon, shipping and the offshore oil and gas industry, which made Bergen an administrative hub after North Sea petroleum came ashore from the 1970s. The Hanseatic "old building" Aiton's notes as still serving as a warehouse is now Bryggen, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979 and rebuilt after repeated fires, most severely in 1955. The seventy inches of rain, at least, stand.
Written for this edition, 2026.