Bergen

Trading at Bergen may have begun as early as the 1020s, and tradition says King Olav Kyrre founded the town in 1070 as Bjørgvin, "the green meadow among the mountains". In the early 13th century it became the first city with a rudimentary central administration — in effect Norway's capital — until the role passed to Oslo under Haakon V. In the 14th century the Hanseatic League set up one of its four Kontore on Bryggen, and German merchants, living in their own quarter, controlled the trade in stockfish brought each summer by northern fishermen. Until 1789 Bergen held exclusive rights to the trade between Northern Norway and abroad, and it remained the country's largest city until the 1830s.

Fire shaped the city again and again. Bryggen burned in 1476, and the great fire of 1702 destroyed about 90 per cent of the town; most of the old buildings, Bryggen included, date from the rebuilding that followed. Hanseatic power faded from around 1600, and the Kontor finally closed in the 1750s. In 1873 Armauer Hansen identified the bacterium that causes leprosy here, and in 1916 a fire destroyed around 300 buildings in the centre, which was rebuilt around Torgallmenningen.

On 20 April 1944, during the German occupation, the Dutch cargo ship Voorbode, loaded with over 120 tonnes of explosives, blew up off Bergenhus Fortress, killing at least 150 people. The University of Bergen was founded in 1946, fire destroyed parts of Bryggen in 1955, the wharf became a World Heritage Site in 1979, and in 1972 Bergen, its own county since 1831, absorbed four neighbouring municipalities. Today it is the administrative centre of Vestland.

Bergen has an outsize musical tradition. Edvard Grieg was born here and lived at Troldhaugen, Ole Bull had his island home at Lysøen, and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, was founded as long ago as 1765. In the 1990s and 2000s the city produced the Bergen Wave of pop and indie acts such as Röyksopp and Kings of Convenience, and it is also known as the black metal capital of Norway. The Bergen International Festival, Nattjazz and Bergenfest fill late spring and early summer, and Den Nationale Scene, the main theatre, founded in 1850, had Henrik Ibsen as one of its first in-house playwrights and art directors. Bergen was a European Capital of Culture in 2000.

Local identity is strong. Natives speak Bergensk, a distinct city dialect. The buekorps, neighbourhood brigades of boys aged 7 to 21 who parade with imitation weapons and snare drums, are a tradition unique to Bergen, and SK Brann, founded in 1908, has played in the top flight for 67 of 80 seasons.

The city has been a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for gastronomy since 2015, and its fish market, its Thursday raspeballer and its cinnamon buns are part of everyday pride.

The municipality had about 295,000 people at the start of 2026, making Bergen the second-largest city in Norway, and almost everyone lives in urban areas. The old inner districts — Nordnes, Sandviken, Møhlenpris, Nygård — are dense streets of wooden houses and apartment blocks, while most people live in the sparser suburbs built after 1950 in boroughs such as Fana, Åsane and Laksevåg. In 2022 immigrants and their children of non-Western origin made up about 11 per cent of the population, and those of Western origin about 9 per cent.

The economy faces the sea. Bergen is a centre for maritime business, aquaculture and marine research — the Institute of Marine Research is here — and the main base of the Royal Norwegian Navy at Haakonsvern. Flesland is the main heliport for the North Sea oil and gas fields, and thousands of offshore workers commute through it. The University of Bergen and the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences each have about 16,000 students, and the Norwegian School of Economics in Sandviken is the country's leading business school.

Tourism is a major industry: more than 300 cruise ship calls a year bring nearly half a million passengers, a number that doubled in ten years. Daily life runs on the light rail, buses and the commuter train.

Seafood comes first. Seafood stalls fill the fish market at the head of Vågen, and Bergen fish soup is the city's best-known dish — a heavy, creamed soup made with white fish such as haddock, halibut and cod and various vegetables. Fish balls, cooked cod and fish gratin are local standbys, and the Hanseatic history of the city rests on stockfish brought down from the north and traded through Bergen.

Thursday is raspeballer day. Many cafés and restaurants serve these potato dumplings, also called komle in the west, with bacon, sausages, salted mutton, melted butter and mashed swede, and they can be bought to take away from Kjøttbasaren. At Christmas the west eats pinnekjøtt, cured and sometimes smoked mutton ribs steamed over birch sticks, often with puréed swede and potatoes, beer and akevitt.

Bergen's bakeries sell skillingsboller, sugar-and-cinnamon buns that first reached Norway through Bergen, and there is a restaurant at the top of Ulriken. Restaurants and pubs fill the timber buildings of Bryggen and the streets around Torgallmenningen, and since 2015 the city has belonged to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for gastronomy.