Assignment... Black Viking [antikvár]

BRUGESThe city of Bruges in Belgium, like several other cities in northern Europe that take pride in the beauty of their canals, calls itself the "Venice of the North." It has no need for comparisons, for Bruges has a singular beauty of its own.Bruges was founded in the seventh century as a Viking settlement and named "Brucken," which means The Landing Place. It was fortified in the ninth century and three hundred years later became the greatest port of northern Europe, the chief entrepőt of the Hanseatic League. Today it is the capital of West Flanders. Its port is silted up and it is nine miles from the North Sea coast. Its charm now is due to its baroque Flemish houses, quiet canals, the Minne-water, called the "Lake of Love" and its medieval Gothic buildings that include the Cloth Hall, with its famous carillon, the Baguinage convent, and the art collections that attract daily busloads of tourists.Here and there one can still spot the strain of Viking blood from the wild Norsemen who roared down from Scandinavia with bloody swords, screaming oaths, for arson, robbery, and rape.This spring there were very few tourists. The weather was most unseasonable. It was cold. Ice remained in the canals. Some gloomily said that summer would never come