No one is sure precisely when the “coffee table” tradition began, but consensus traces it back about 60 years. It would take a lot for one of the regulars not to show up. The time is almost 11am and cups are being laid out in the Aspmyra Stadion canteen for the Bodø/Glimt old boys’ daily catchup. In walks Ivar Bakke, who can count himself as the group’s elder statesman at 94. “One of the oldest people in Norway!” he laughs before sitting down. Tall tales are retold, memories sharpened in delighting over past and more recent glories; however far those stretch, everyone here knows what it has taken to bring their club to the barely fathomable territory of a Europa League semi-final.
The raconteur in chief is Jacob Klette, a sharp figure in his late 70s who made almost 400 appearances for a team that broke boundaries. “The northern part of Norway has always had to fight for its rights,” Klette says. “I played for Lyn, the best team in Oslo, in the late 1960s. You would open the newspaper and see adverts: ‘We have an apartment for rent, but not for people from the north.’ You felt disgusted to see it.”
