Røros

Before the mines, the plateau around Røros was used by the Southern Sámi for reindeer herding, with only scattered settlement. In 1644 permission was given to work a copper lode in the mountains nearby, and in 1646 the town was granted royal privileges as a bergstad, a mining town, with rights over a circle of land around the first mine known as the Circumference. Røros and the silver town of Kongsberg are Norway's only two historic mining towns of this kind.

The young town suffered in the wars with Sweden. Swedish troops burned it in 1678 and 1679, and in 1718 General De la Barre seized it and its copper. When King Charles XII was killed that winter, the Swedish army retreated across the mountains north-west of Røros, and more than 3,000 soldiers died in the cold. From 1740 several mines yielded well, and the copper works entered its greatest period. The smelters consumed so much wood and charcoal that much of the forest on the plateau was cut down. Dynamite arrived in 1870, the Røros Line railway in 1877 and electric power for the mines in 1897.

Johan Falkberget's novels made the miners known to all Norwegians at the start of the 20th century, telling the town's story from the bottom of the social ladder. Mining ended in 1977 after 333 years. The town was added to the World Heritage list in 1980, and the listing now covers the whole of the mining town and the Circumference.

Røros lives with its history in plain sight. About 80 historic wooden houses survive, most of them built around courtyards, and many keep their dark pitch-coated log walls. The church of 1784, Bergstadens Ziir, "the ornament of the mining town", was paid for by the mining company and belonged to it until 1865, when it became public property. Locally the two main streets, officially Bergmannsgata and Kjerkgata, are called Storgata and Litjgata.

The year turns on two events. Rørosmartnan, the winter market first held in 1854, opens in late February with the arrival of around 80 horse-drawn sleds and draws tens of thousands of visitors to its market and cultural events. In summer Elden, an outdoor musical theatre staged every year since 1994, remembers the Swedish soldiers who froze to death in the winter of 1718–19. A Christmas market is held in December.

Røros is also part of the Southern Sámi homeland: the town's Sámi name is Plaassja, and in 2022 the municipality was given the co-official Sámi name Rosse. Artists and craftspeople are numerous, selling pottery, handicrafts and reindeer and sheep skins. The town has served as a film location, among others for Joseph Losey's version of Ibsen's A Doll's House and for the Swedish television series about Pippi Longstocking.

The town had 3,909 inhabitants in 2024, and the whole municipality about 5,700, spread over a large area of plateau, lakes and mountains. Many people still live and work in the 17th- and 18th-century buildings that make up the World Heritage town, so the old streets are a working community rather than an open-air museum.

With the mines closed, visitors arrive by the railway and by a small airport with flights to Oslo, and the Røros Museum's sites draw about 70,000 visits a year. The area has long been used by the Southern Sámi for reindeer herding, and the museum also cares for Southern Sámi cultural history.

Life here is shaped by altitude and cold. The town sits at about 630 metres on a gently sloping plateau of birch and pine near the tree line, and winters are long: snow lies on the ground from December into April, and the cold can be severe. In compensation the snow lasts well into spring, and the lakes of Aursunden and Femunden draw people out to canoe and fish in summer.

Røros eats like a mountain town. Reindeer and moose meat are the local specialities, and a typical local meal is fresh bread with local cheeses, cold cuts and gravlaks. Local produce ranges from herbs, fish and game to cheeses, and the organic tjukkmjølk of Rørosmeieriet, a thick soured milk, carries a protected geographical name.

Regional dishes from Trøndelag appear here too. Sodd, a soup of cooked mutton and small meatballs of lamb or beef in a clear broth, with potatoes and carrots boiled separately and added at the table, is the region's festive dish. Karsk, coffee laced with moonshine and sometimes a spoonful of sugar, comes from Trøndelag as well.

Brown cheese, the sweet caramel-coloured whey cheese, is popular on Norwegian waffles. The cafés and small food shops in the old houses of Bergmannsgata and Kjerkgata are the places to find local bread and cheese. During Rørosmartnan in February, old dance music fills the town's cafés and venues from early in the day until late at night.