Cops on trail of "gingerbread town" vandals

OSLO (Reuters) - The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the Norwegian city's traditional Christmas decoration -- a town of gingerbread houses.

Saturday vandals entered a massive tent in central Bergen and crushed most of the 650-cookie-house town, topping off the ruins with paint and fire extinguisher foam.

Police in Norway's second largest city asked the public to offer information that could lead to the perpetrators.

"The people who did this must be full of gingerbread dust, They will smell a long way," police inspector Erik Sveaas told news agency NTB.

Local media reported that the destruction had shocked the residents of Bergen, a picturesque city on the North Sea coast where children decorate hundreds of gingerbread houses every year before Christmas.

Steinar Kristoffersen, who runs the Bergen Sentrum foundation behind "the worlds largest and greatest gingerbread town," said the opening of the exhibit will be postponed well into next week due to the vandalism.

"We are rebuilding the whole landscape and are receiving a lot of gingerbread houses. Many want to lend a hand," Kristoffersen told Reuters.

In an Internet campaign, some petitioners suggested the perpetrators be pilloried, but local Bishop Halvor Nordhaug cooled the atmosphere and told local paper Bergens Tidende: "We must not lynch anyone over a few gingerbread houses."

(Reporting by Richard Solem, editing by Paul Casciato)