There was no way I could have anticipated this: During a stroll through one of the many piers in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city at the west coast of the country, my girlfriend and I sat on a bench to relax and enjoy the late afternoon sun during our two-week trip. It was several days after we’ve been to Oslo, the capital, where I made sure to check the Pinball Map app in order to find some silverball places.

But Bergen is small compared to Oslo and has a different vibe. It’s not really rural but not urban as well. It’s a seaport with cruise ships going in and out, with a renowned fish market, wooden handcraft, folk architecture and a vibrant black metal community. While we were sitting on that bench I briefly checked Pinball Map regardless. There was one bar and one arcade in the area with five machines each. But then there was something else: A location that supposedly boasts over 120 machines, located at about five minutes walking distance to where we were. Needless to say, I was both dumbfounded and intrigued. If there was any chance of visiting this place, called Bergen Pinball Club, I had to find an opportunity to do so. Luckily, we had two more days in Bergen ahead of us.

On the respective website, I found an email address and immediately introduced myself to whoever would read this and asked whether and when one could visit. Pretty quickly, back came a reply by one Kjell Erik Husom, the man in charge at Bergen Pinball Club. We arranged a date and he agreed to show us around the premises in the early evening of the upcoming day.

Labyrinthine basement

Contrary to what the big number on Pinball Map suggests, Bergen Pinball Club is not located in a big loft, a spacious hall or within the former premises of a large store. Instead, we needed to turn into a smaller side street, right next to some stairs that lead down to the pier. There was an inconspicuous steel door that you would maybe suspect to be the entrance to a small garage. One couldn’t be more wrong though because this door rather leads to an intricate dungeon of pinball bliss, a basement with so many rooms that it’s almost impossible to wrap your head around it when you step down there for the first time.

Kjell Erik was very hospitable and energetic from the beginning. Instantly, one could feel that he is a pinhead with passion who is not only heading Bergen Pinball Club but is also its supplier of machines, the main maintenance guy, the organizer of tournaments, and the one in charge of communication. This is a man who wants to get things done and who loves to talk about it. He brags about his achievements in a surprisingly charming way but also has no problem scrutinizing himself and going off on a tangent you wouldn’t expect.

Mr. Husom doesn’t fit in common categories: He is neither a typical collector who doesn’t want his machines to be played by too many people, nor is he in for the money. Running a pinball place as a museum also doesn’t strike him as particularly attractive. Instead, Bergen Pinball Club is a silverball collective, if you will. Kjell Erik, a professional bass trombone player at Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and father to five children, is happy to keep the place running while providing annually paying members keys so that they can come, play pinball and leave whenever they like. It’s a rare concept that I didn’t encounter anywhere before during my 15 years of pinball culture experience. Both this venue and its mastermind are treasure troves that I wanted to learn more about.

Hello Kjell Erik Husom, thanks for having us! Would you please introduce yourself and Bergen Pinball Club.

Bergen Pinball Club is a voluntary club in Norway. We have no ownership, but we have a board. I’m the leader and main force. I take full responsibility for most of the things and maybe I’m also spoiling people. 95% of the work here is done by me, but it’s all joy and I try to maintain a place where people can meet and enjoy the magic of pinball. We have a lot of children’s birthdays and events. I never experienced anyone coming out of this club disappointed or not in a happy state.

Can you give me examples on why pinball is special to you?

You need to be humble to play pinball. Muscles don’t matter. Every adult competes on the same level as children. Also, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, male or female, etc. When it comes to competition, I like to scan people’s expressions on their faces and judge their agility and reflexes, especially those who visit for the first time. Then I often seem to know who will be a winner at a tournament – and I write this down on a note.

So you’re making a bet with yourself?

Yes, and the others don’t know what I’ve written. You look at player’s faces and hands. I like to make a stroll through the different rooms while they warm up. Do they have the right type of fire in their eyes? Also I like to watch body movements and reflexes.

Let’s talk about this venue: We’re inside an immensely large basement. It’s basically a labyrinth with many rooms. Bergen is a smaller city with a big port and you wouldn’t think that such a place exists here. How is this possible?

I want to be modest, but: There wouldn’t be Bergen Pinball Club without me. Maybe I have spoiled people by doing too much. It’s also a little bit sad that 95% of the games are mine.

So you would take even more machines from friends or people who would like to lend them to you?

I have no intention of owning every game in the club, so I would want people to contribute more. But they may not feel they have to contribute because everything is served already?

Kjell Erik, you would maybe need to be a little more demanding towards people and say: Hey, contribute something!

No, no, I never say that, and that’s the problem. I just don’t ask people for anything. The only thing I say is: Pay your annual fee, come and play pinball and be happy. It’s hard to make volunteer work work. When everything is served all the time, maybe you’re just too friendly. But I also don’t want to scare people away.

When is Bergen Pinball Club open? Are there regular opening days and hours?

We don’t open regularly. Members get keys to access the club. We have different tiers of membership. The foyer with 44 games is considered to be the first tier with a huge variety of games already. But my favorite and most expensive games are in the other rooms. To access them, you have to pay more per year. But the whole club is open during monthly tournaments and club evenings. So everyone has access to the club from time to time, even though they don’t pay for membership.

How many members do you have who have keys and can come in whenever they want?

At the moment it’s 54 people with keys. It’s all trust based. We also have a stocked-up fridge. So when they come, they can buy whatever is in that fridge.

If I would apply to Bergen Pinball Club, and you obviously don’t know me that well: What do you need from me? Except from paying the annual fee, of course.

I don’t check any papers but I do conduct small interviews with people who want to become members. I take them through the club and ask them at which tier they want to join. Then we sign a contract – and I make them understand what’s in the contract – and after that, they are happy to experience the magic of pinball whenever they want!

You do so many things yourself here already. You also told me before that you are not too keen on electric and electronic maintenance. Who does all the repairing when the machines break down?

Yeah, I’m not the greatest person at fixing machines. But to find an error, a stuck or non-firing transistor, a loose connection, or anything like that: I can manage. It’s based on both intuition and experience, and when you have been repairing for a while most errors are recurring.

So at some point, you just know the most common problems by heart.

Exactly. But a really bad matrix error is maybe not my favorite.

But you’re just not afraid of things, right?

I can solve maybe 85% of the errors and most of them are recurring, as I mentioned. They happened before on a different game. If I get stuck I have this guy that runs the machines at Tilt in Oslo. He comes here every once in a while. I was hoping he was coming next week. I have four or five problems I wanted him to solve but maybe it’s not going to happen at this time.

You have five children. You’re a professional bass trombone player. And then you are running this place. How is your time management working out for you?

There’s no magic here. I try to make as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. We just have to realize: We all cannot really multitask. Please don’t use that word! Work on one thing at a time and you will do it more efficiently. If you try to solve four problems at a time, you will spend eight time longer. I take one thing at a time and that leads me to the next thing. You just make the necessary steps really quickly with the needed quality. One thing I learned as a musician: I used to be an obsessive perfectionist on my instrument. That’s most likely the reason why I won an audition. But also, you cannot win auditions without passion which is more of a state of mind. In the long run what’s most important is that you need to learn that you should not be a perfectionist, at least not all the time. 90% is enough and so much faster. Why work ten more hours to get the last 10% done? This is something I had to learn throughout the years.

Let’s stay at those 90% and talk about skill levels: You started as a student with bass trombone, but you started playing pinball when you were a little bit older?

No, I probably started to play trombone just when I started to play pinball. But to be a good musician you have to practice 10.000 hours. I have never practiced 10.000 hours of pinball because it doesn’t pay anything. Pinball is recreation and entertainment but doesn’t pay the bills. Playing an instrument is also quite different from pinball although finger dexterity and nuanced movements are involved in both.

We already briefly touched on the subject of women and children. How do you manage to bring in a more varied crowd to Bergen Pinball Club, maybe during tournaments?

Most of our members are male but I think the events are the big difference: When the kids have a party, for instance. Also, we rent the club out for companies to do team building events or organize partys for them as well. Everybody then has a great time and it’s a positive and diverse thing. Events are also paying well so we can keep the annual fee for the members. But we also need to keep the rentals under control because I don’t want us to be something like the Dutch Pinball Museum in terms of how much the machines are being played. Because when machines are played a lot then the necessity for maintenance goes up significantly.

Where else do you find pinball in Norway? Are machines to be found more in bars or in private collections? I’ve only been to the Tilt bar in Oslo so far.

Arcades are not common so it’s mostly a few bars. That’s the reason why I built this place. I was investigating if there were enough people to create a community of interested people to form a club.

Which are some of your machines that you’re most fond of?

I like them all and that’s probably why I have so many. But for me, the core expression of pinball was more unique in the 90s than it is today. These days, the designers try to build whole amusement parks within the machines and I think that’s the wrong approach. Because it should be more about basics game elements and controlling the ball. With newer machines it’s more about grinding. In the 90s you had shorter games and wanted to play again and again.

Pictures and support: Angelika Pichler. Spontaneous pinheads (or those in the area) can still join Bergen Pinball Open (11-14 September 2025). Alternatively, there are the monthly tournaments.