Tønsberg

Tønsberg is generally regarded as the oldest town in Norway. Snorri Sturluson mentions it before the battle of Hafrsfjord, traditionally dated to 872, so it existed by 871 at the latest, and the town celebrated its thousandth anniversary in 1871. Archaeology confirms a farm settlement at the end of the 8th century that probably grew into a town in the early 9th. The farm Haugar, likely its birthplace, became the seat of the Haugating, the assembly for Vestfold and the second most important place in Norway for proclaiming kings. In 1904 the Oseberg ship, buried no earlier than 834, was dug out of a mound at the Oseberg farm nearby.

Slottsfjellet, the steep hill north of the harbour, made a near impregnable natural fortress. In the winter of 1201–1202 the Birkebeiner besieged and starved out the Baglers who had taken refuge there, and King Håkon IV built Castrum Tunsbergis, in the 13th century Norway's largest castle. Swedish soldiers razed the fortifications in 1503, and the town burned in 1536, yet Tønsberg remained one of the country's most important harbours.

In the 19th century it turned to the Arctic. From the 1850s it was a base for sealers and whalers, and Svend Foyn, the pioneer of modern whaling, worked from here, earning the town the name "the cradle of modern whaling". By the early 20th century neighbouring Sandefjord had taken the lead. Tønsberg became a cathedral city in 1948, absorbed rural Sem in 1988, and is today the administrative centre of Vestfold.

The town's sense of itself rests on age. The fortress ruins on Slottsfjellet are its main attraction, the Vestfold museum at their foot tells the story of the castle and of whaling, and an annual medieval festival and a Viking festival revive the distant past. In 2011–2012 a foundation in the town built Saga Oseberg, a full-scale copy of the Oseberg ship, launched in June 2012 and now a familiar sight on the Byfjorden.

Music fills the summer. The Slottsfjell Festival, held on the fortress hill every mid-July since 2003, has become one of Norway's largest festivals, with close to 30,000 visitors over three days, and in June the Vestfold festival brings classical concerts to the town and the surrounding district. Haugar Vestfold Art Museum, in the former Seamen's School, is part of the Vestfold museums and stands in parkland beside the old assembly site.

Summer life is centred on the water. People from Oslo and elsewhere in Norway come to Tønsberg on holiday, cabin owners from Tjøme and Nøtterøy come into town by boat, and the quayside bars fill on light evenings. Sport is followed locally too, with the Tønsberg Vikings ice hockey team at the town's rink. The town even has a small place in popular culture: it appears in Captain America: The First Avenger, where the Red Skull takes the Tesseract from a church.

The city has about 55,000 people (2023) and is the ninth-largest in Norway; it has grown across the water onto Nøtterøy, where close to 18,000 of its residents live in neighbouring Færder Municipality. The urban area stretches from Eik in the north to Borgheim on Nøtterøy, and it grew by about a fifth between 2000 and 2015, faster than Vestfold as a whole. Tønsberg is also among the municipalities with the most children and young people per head in the country.

As county seat it is home to Vestfold's administration and the Diocese of Tunsberg, and Farmandstredet in the centre is its large shopping centre. The traditional shipyards at Kaldnes and Jarlsø have closed, though a large workshop at Kaldnes still builds equipment for the oil industry, and the municipality has large areas of farmland that can be worked efficiently, with food industry at Sem.

The rhythm changes sharply with the season. In summer the town fills with boat owners, cabin guests and visitors, the quayside is crowded late into the evening and the July festival takes over the hill. The rest of the year is quieter, centred on the shops of the old centre and schools.

The best-known Tønsberg meal is the simplest: fresh shrimp bought by the harbour and eaten on the quay, with the leftovers thrown to the seagulls. In Norway prawns are caught by small trawlers and sold cooked at the quays, and buying half a kilogram to eat by the water is a summer ritual. Crabs and mussels have also become popular summer seafood.

Tønsberg Municipality has large areas of farmland. Most restaurants and bars are on Tønsberg Brygge and in the old sea-house blocks between the quays and Nedre Langgate, where historic merchants' buildings such as Foynegården now share the waterfront with terraces that fill on summer evenings.

Everyday Norwegian food is found here as everywhere: fiskesuppe, a white, milk-based soup with vegetables and several kinds of fish; lapskaus, a stew of meat with potatoes, carrots, swede and onion; and brunost, the sweet brown cheese of caramelised lactose from goat's milk or a mix of goat's and cow's milk, eaten with bread. Beer is the usual drink on the quay, while wine and spirits are sold only at the state Vinmonopolet shops.