As well as an extensive range of vegetarian and pescatarian dishes, Kosher meals can be pre-ordered before departure, and are delivered to the harbour before being cooked on board.
With staff keeping a close eye to ensure all requirements are adhered to, passengers can carry on relaxing and make the most of their itinerary.
Bergen alone includes a range of excursions and the chance to explore independently, but one of the most scenic welcomes to the country’s former capital must be the Introduction to Bergen and Mount Fløyen tour.
Ascending the famous Fløibanen funicular, visitors get remarkable views over the city that was home to the likes of Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg.
One of the world’s main exporters of Atlantic salmon, historically Bergen was renowned for trading stockfish, but its position in the North Sea made Norway strategically valuable during the Second World War: ideally situated for fighting the British Navy, and well situated to ship iron-ore from neutral Sweden.
In April 1940 the Nazis invaded, with Bergen first in the firing line.
It’s said that the Fløibanen funicular was used to transport Nazi weapons up the mountainside. Today the carriages are painted in the reds and blues of Norway’s flag and standing on the summit, it’s difficult to imagine the chaos that struck the civilised city and its small Jewish community, almost 80 years ago.
Historically Norway’s Jewish population was never particularly large. This was in part due to extensive, fluctuating laws, limiting Jewish rights to travel or enforcing expulsion. In 1851 the Norwegian parliament lifted such bans, and the population increased, swelled by a burst of refugees in the 1930s.
Figures vary, but at the outbreak of the war, around 2,000 Jews lived in Norway. And whilst there were Nazi sympathisers, Bergen is renowned as a site of intense resistance.
A few minutes from the harbour, the free Bergenhus Festningsmuseum (Fortress Museum) has a floor dedicated to local resistance movements, such as Milorg, Theta and the Stein Organisation, along with information panels on the Holocaust revealing how Jews were arrested in the city during two main round-ups in 1942.
Fortunately, many received advance warning of the arrests and deportations from Norwegian police and members of the underground. About 900 Jews escaped to neutral Sweden with the help of sympathisers and the resistance movement — around half of the entire Jewish population.
Dotted along the waterfront, the colourful wooden Bryggen houses are synonymous with Bergen. This Unesco World Heritage site features attractive Hanseatic buildings painted in rich reds, mustard and white.
Many tourists take the obligatory photographs before grabbing a drink at one of the many bars: instead, disappear into the Visitor Centre to request access to the Theta Museum.
You’re led up a dark alley in the Bryggen, ascending a narrow staircase, then through a restaurant before heading back outside onto a balcony where two boarded-up doors, clearly lacking handles, stand before you.
Our guide, Henrik, explained that few people in Bergen even know that this site exists today. As the door swung open, a tiny room filled with radio equipment, explosives, weapons and rudimentary facilities appears frozen in time.
It’s been restored and recreated, but this was the operation room of the infamous Theta Group, a young resistance movement with around a dozen members aged only 19-22.
Jan Dahm was the leader who established this compact HQ. Young Bjarne Winter Thorsen, aged only 19, made repeated and intrepid journeys to London aboard resistance fishing boats, known as the Shetland Bus, to reach the UK and make contact with the British.
He returned with radios, weapons and crash courses on explosives and intelligence gathering, as well as cigarettes, tea and coffee.
Theta’s task was to monitor all German traffic off the coast of Norway, and thanks to their superior transmitters information would coalesce here from other intelligence groups.
The team’s biggest achievement was sharing the hidden fjord location of the Nazi’s prize warship, the Tirpitz, with the Allies. Tucked away in Åsenfjord, the Tirpitz had slipped off the radar and disappeared.
Norway’s connected and determined resistance movement played a huge part in enabling the Allies to track and attack the ship, until it was ultimately destroyed in Tromsø in 1944.
Admittedly, it’s difficult to imagine hiding a warship, but the Norwegian fjords are so vast and intricate that it’s perfectly possible.
Back on board the Balmoral, we embarked on a scenic voyage up Lysefjord before docking at Eidfjord in Hardangerfjord, getting a sense of the rugged terrain and vast waters that cut jagged swathes into Norway’s west coast.
The scale of this wild landscape is quite staggering. Local knowledge of the mountains and fjords played into the resistance’s strengths, and it becomes clear that Norway’s fjords will always be difficult for outside forces to control if the will of the people isn’t there.
During the cruise, the experienced Fred Olsen crew picked up local pilots to assist guiding the cruise ship through these complex waters. Even with cutting-edge radar, satellite navigation tools and modern radio communication to hand, local knowledge still plays a vital role.
And as the Balmoral left the handsome Norwegian shores behind, the beauty of the land and the bravery of so many of its population left their own indelible memories on those of us seeking history amid the luxury.
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