STAVANGER: Norway emerged as an ideal tourist destination due to its proximity to Aurora Borealis, the shimmering, dancing spectacle of colours aka Northern Lights. With its long coastline, Insta-worthy fjords and all kinds of hikes — the one to Pulpit Rock in the country's southwest calls hikers from all around the world — travellers keep flocking to this part of the world on a regular basis. On average, there are over six million international visitors per year, remarkable because Norway is home to 5.5 million residents. Over the last few years, though, a fair few backpackers have added a new destination.
Bryne.
A coastal town in Rogaland county south of Stavanger, it is your stereotypical small town in western Europe. The houses are cute, the air is clean, everybody knows everybody (population is just north of 12000), commercial establishments are small and rolling meadows dominate the periphery.
So why did Bryne, the smallest of dots on the map, go from being a nondescript town to welcoming visitors from all seven continents?
Erling Braut Haaland.
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One of Norway's most famous athletes, Haaland may have been born in Leeds in the UK but the family moved back when he was still a baby. With baby Haaland naturally showing an inclination towards the game — father, Alf-Inge, was an international footballer — he quickly came up the ranks at Bryne, the local club named after the town. Even if he took time to develop his physical attributes, something about his mental capacities convinced the club's youth coaches that he was going to be a keeper. Kjell Madland, the founder of the Norway Chess, was a former CEO of the club.
Having joined the youth system in 2006, he progressed through the ranks thanks to an uncommon appetite to keep getting better. Even today, coaches at the club talk about his A+ attitude in training sessions. That's what kept him in good stead as he missed several growth spurts.
That, however, didn't stop the youth coaches from promoting their forward to an age group at least a year older. Off the field, he showed respect. "On the field," one of the volunteers at the club says, "there wasn't much of that. He would go up against anybody." This outlook of his won a lot of fans.
Soon enough, at the age of 15, he found himself in Bryne's first team. He played over a dozen games for the then second-division side but he didn't score a single goal. He left for Molde in Norway's north post that season and, as it turned out, he went from strength to strength.
But, for the football club and the tight-knit community in and around Bryne, Haaland is everywhere.
He exists in a giant-sized mural from his Borussia Dortmund days on a busy intersection overlooking the train station. A smaller mural of his father is on a wall just outside an Indian tandoor restaurant. Several Haaland specials are found on the menus of various eateries. The club shop sells Haaland merch. A 'Haaland Stadium tour' is part of the charm offensive the city offers to tourists. There's a Haaland suite in one of the hotels next to the club stadium. One of the nearby stalls even sells a drink the footballer swears by, 'cow's milk'.
It's pretty obvious that the local community acts as a collective for Haaland. When Man City played Inter Milan in the 2023 edition of the Champions League, 2500 people watched a special screening in the city centre. Or, to put it in other words, 20 per cent of the population.
The connection is mutual. "Whenever he has some free time, Haaland comes back to the club and to this community," one of the volunteers says. "He has a house here overlooking the club."
The 24-year-old may have left his first club without a single senior goal but he's still paying them handsomely. Thanks to transfer rules, whenever he's sold, money gets trickled down. For example, when the striker was bought by Manchester City, Bryne received over 10mn NOK. They could receive an even greater piece of the pie if a Real Madrid come calling.
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The Jaeren region of Norway supports agriculture thanks to a climate conducive to it, something that cannot be said for places up north. Its agricultural identity is very much present in Bryne, one of the main towns in the region.
Nowhere is this more evident than inside the club. They have a separate enclosure for farmers to come in with their tractors. In a game in April, the man of the match received several trays of locally sourced eggs. Milk has also been handed out as a prize for the MVP. "Our goal is to forge a farmers' identity and instil pride in both the club and the region," Bjorn Hagerup Roeken, the club's marketing manager, had told Reuters in April.
This pride, or the abundance and the importance of the region's fertile soil, is plastered next to a life-size image of Haaland inside the club's indoor training facility.
When translated into English, it says: "We will sow the joy of football, nurture talent and harvest miracles."
It's kind of poetic why the club has this as their call to arms. Jaeren wasn't always amenable to agriculture. The story goes that the people of the Jaeren put in a lot of hours to make the soil cultivable at a time when automation wasn't possible. So, hard work was the only way forward.
Agriculture. Hard work. Haaland. Miracles. It just ties in.
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Pep Guardiola knows Haaland like the back of his hand. When Haaland was coming through the various age-group teams, Espen Undheim was that coach. "When he was 8-9-10... he had that same spirit for scoring goals," Undheim, who has been associated with Bryne for the last 25 years, says. "If he didn't get the ball when he was in the right position, he got angry. If he didn't score when he had obvious chances, he got angry. He was always hungry for scoring goals.
"Back then, he was one of the smallest guys. So, he couldn't use his physical skills. He had to be clever to get in the right position to score but he also had the mentality as he was always prepared. He was looking at older players, he was looking at star players in other leagues. He was always looking for how to get in behind and score. His mentality for being in the right position, to get the ball in the right position, that's quite special. I haven't seen that since I saw him when he was a youth player.
"You can't see that normally in boys who are 9-10-11. Only special kids are thinking like that. I also have videos of speaking to him after training sessions where I would ask him 'how did it go today'?" And he would say 'not good, only scored one'. And when I pointed out, but you helped your team, he would say 'not good, I had to score four or five'."
He married that preternatural ability with an immeasurable spirit. "He had a lot of his own training," Undheim adds. "He lived inside the indoor arena. Before training began, he would be on his own, shooting, and dribbling. After training, he would be playing games with his friends. Even if we were off on Saturdays and Sundays, he would spend four hours in there."
These days, a lot of 11-12-13-year-olds at Bryne look up to Haaland. "I'm now the head coach of the Under-13s," Espen says. "The kids tune in whenever City or Norway play. Last week when he was downtown, a lot of the kids ran up to him to get his sign."
One of the few remaining links from when Haaland was a player at the club and now is Sondre Norheim, a defender who now features in the first team. "He was not as strong and big as he is today," Norheim, married to an Indian, says. "But you could tell he had an unreal ability to be at the right place and score goals. He still has it today, but he also has the speed and power. When you combine those two, he is unstoppable in front of goal."
What was it like marking Haaland in a training session? "You had to be smart because he was smart in the way he positioned himself. If you weren't going to consider his movements, he would get by you."
Another thing Norheim, 28, remembers was the striker's fearlessness. "It didn't matter to him if he played someone his age or someone twice his age. He played the way he knew how to play and didn't respect them because of who they were. He went in, he tackled hard and he played with no fear."
He retains it today.
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These are heady days for Bryne. Last year, they won promotion to the Eliteserien, the top division. It was their first in over two decades. But the club's biggest honour is the 1987 win in the domestic Cup final (pictures from that win occupy a pride of place in the club's corridors).
It's still their only title in the nearly 100-year history (they turn 100 next year).
But they will always be remembered as the club of Erling Braut Haaland.
A local hero and a national treasure whose worth is already incalculable.
The tour was facilitated by Region Stavanger, Edge of Norway