# The Haaland safari: Bryne celebrates its famous son in Norway’s newest tourist attraction

Visitors are encouraged to visit the training ground and first club of the Manchester City No 9 and can stay in the ‘Haaland suite’ at a local hotel

## “Farmers didn’t play football,” says the lifelong supporter Geir Magnus Sandve of the fact that his beloved Bryne FK were not founded until 1926. These are momentous times for the Norwegian football club in the agricultural south-western region of Jæren. Last season they were promoted back to the Eliteserien, the top division, for the first time in 22 years in front of a capacity crowd of 5,000 and excitement is building before the start of the season at the end of March. Fans hope they can return to heights not seen since they won the cup in Oslo in 1987 – which would have been considered the club’s crowning achievement were it not for the rise of .

In the brittle, banter-fuelled world of English football, it might feel as if Haaland’s star is waning this season. It is easy to forget he is second only to Mohamed Salah in the Premier League Golden Boot after winning it in the previous two seasons. At the age of 24 he is the all-time Norwegian national team top scorer (38 in 39 matches), and a Champions League, Premier League and Austrian league winner. The school playground of my six-year-old son, Ernest, is no longer consumed by the great Messi-Ronaldo debate but instead is alive to the shouts of “HAAAAARRR-LAND”.

Before we leave the Jærhallen, Endre points out the enormous pictures of Haaland and Tuva Hansen, who plays for Bayern Munich’s women’s team, alongside a caption in Norwegian: “We will sow the joy of football, nurture talent, and harvest miracles.” This might make Haaland sound like a freakishly big prize-winning vegetable. But it isn’t just slogananeering. The club’s philosophy ties in with the agricultural character of the Jæren region. Work to turning the rock-strewn hillsides into arable land using only spades, before heavy machinery, was backbreaking, and contributed to the mythos of Jæren as a place where hard work was a prerequisite.

We arrive at the club shop. A cluster of Manchester City shirts hang among the red and white merch – the locals buy City shirts, but not so much the tourists, who want an authentic home shirt. Like all Norwegian clubs, Bryne are owned by the members, but commerce is still vital to their existence and they have a natural entrepreneurial streak to woo business: in the 1980s they were the first Norwegian club to create a VIP area. Now Bryne are back in the top division, investment is needed, but Bjørn says they still have to be “smart in the transfer market”. The rise of Haaland internationally has coincided with a revival of fortunes for Bryne FK. When Haaland was sold to City, the club were compensated to the tune of 10m NOK (£710,900). Some hope Real Madrid will one day swoop for him, meaning another payday for the club, particularly now he has signed a nine-year contract.

We head out of the club shop and take a look at the playing surface. “We are only one of few teams in Norway in the top level that are playing on natural grass,” says Sandve. The groundsman is – what else? – a farmer, “so he knows how to do it”, says Endre. The grass will soon be put to the test, when Bryne kick off the new season against last year’s champions, Bodø/Glimt, on 30 March.

After playing Where’s Erling? while looking at old youth-team squad photos in the clubhouse, we head into town, passing the high school Haaland went to en route to Forum Jæren, the tallest building in Bryne. From the top you can see the sea, the mountains, the whole town. We look down at the mural of Haaland on the side of a former dairy by the Bryne-born street artist Pøbel, who used a fire extinguisher filled with yellow paint to create it. It is the first thing visitors on the train see as they arrive. We pass a more modest piece, a tribute to Alf-Inge Haaland, designed by Frode’s 12-year-old son, before we head to the last attraction – a mural depicting a cartoon Erling affecting his trademark meditation celebration, positioned next to Wen Hua House, his favourite Chinese restaurant, where you can buy a Haaland special (sweet and sour chicken and rice).

It is hard to tally the small, parochial details of Haaland’s hometown with his gargantuan stature around the world. I notice for the rest of the trip that every shop sells Haaland-branded ice lollies, and talk to Ståle Økland, a former politician and writer whose father, Arne Larsen Økland, played as a star striker for Bryne in the 1970s and 80s. “I remember I was in Japan last year,” he says. “We were up in the mountains hiking. When we met some of the locals, they asked us where we came from, and we said Norway. And the first thing they said was: ‘Haaland.’”

## Explore more on these topics

- 
- 
- 
```