There were just three activist, standing on the makeshift podium in Torgallmenningen: one, in red shirt, was doing the talking, whilst the other two worked as human poles, raising a slogan spray-painted on a piece of torn bedclothes. Around them a small crowd gathered, young men and women with jute bags adorned with slogans, such as Boykott Israel, which made me think that they weren’t listening to a speech about the reintroduction of fox hunting.

No police stood at the margins, an unusual occurrence in my experience of political gatherings. But then I remembered this was Bergen, and that there were more children drawing with chalk on the stones of Torgallmenningen than activists.