POLICE will run, run as fast as they can do, they need to catch a gingerbread vandal.

And while police are trying to sniff out the people who destroyed a Norwegian city's traditional Christmas gingerbread village, the people of Bergen have rolled out the cookie dough to replace it.

On 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."



