Southern Norway

Vestfold, on the west side of the Oslofjord, was a seat of power in the Viking Age. The great burial mounds at Borre, Oseberg and Gokstad held royal ship burials, and the Oseberg ship, dug out near Tønsberg in 1904, is among the finest finds of the Viking Age. Tønsberg itself traditionally dates its founding to before 871 and was a medieval royal town and trading port, and the trading site of Kaupang near Larvik was one of Scandinavia's earliest towns.

Under Danish rule the Skagerrak coast grew rich on timber and sailing ships. Christian IV founded Kristiansand in 1641 on a regular grid, and the harbour towns — Arendal, Grimstad, Risør, Lillesand, Mandal, Flekkefjord — built fleets that carried timber and later freight across the world. Their prosperity peaked in the age of sail in the 19th century and collapsed when steam took over, which is why so many white wooden houses of that era survive untouched. Vestfold's Sandefjord and Tønsberg turned to whaling instead and, in the early 20th century, dominated modern whaling in the Antarctic.

Inland Telemark had a different history of remote farming valleys, until waterfalls became power. Norsk Hydro built a hydro-electric plant and fertiliser works at Rjukan and Notodden from the early 1900s, creating an industrial town in a deep valley. During the German occupation the Vemork plant produced heavy water, and Norwegian commandos sabotaged it in 1943 in one of the war's most famous raids. The Rjukan–Notodden industrial landscape became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.

Agder has long been part of Norway's Bible Belt, where Lutheran lay movements, prayer houses and free churches shaped local life and politics. The southern coastal dialects are recognisable across Norway by their throaty, uvular "r", and the coast has its own easy summer image of sailboats, islands and white fences.

Telemark and the Setesdal valley are rich in folk tradition. Telemark gave its name to telemark skiing, pioneered by Sondre Norheim from Morgedal in the 19th century, and the region is known for rosemaling, wood carving, fiddle music on the Hardanger fiddle and kveding, traditional unaccompanied singing. Setesdal keeps a distinctive bunad costume, dialect, folk music and dance, and its own style of old farm buildings.

Literature has deep roots here. Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien in 1828 and worked as an apothecary's apprentice in Grimstad, and Knut Hamsun spent his later years at Nørholm near Grimstad. Summer brings festivals to the coast — Risør's wooden boat festival, jazz and blues in the towns, and the week of political debates in Arendal each summer, when much of the national political class moves south.

Kristiansand, with about 115,000 people after a municipal merger, is the largest city and the centre of Agder, with a university, a port and the Kilden performing arts centre. Vestfold is densely settled, with Sandefjord, Tønsberg and Larvik each home to tens of thousands, and Skien and Porsgrunn form the industrial core of Telemark. Arendal and Grimstad are the other main coastal towns; inland, Rjukan, Notodden, Bø and the Setesdal villages are small.

Work mixes old industry — the Porsgrunn fertiliser and polymer plants, Kristiansand's nickel refinery and offshore-equipment makers — with farming in fertile Vestfold, forestry and hydro power inland, and a large summer tourism and holiday-cabin economy along the coast. Many coastal houses are second homes that stand empty in winter.

Summer changes the rhythm completely. From late June the harbours fill with pleasure boats, the islands with families, and the population of small towns like Lyngør and Risør swells many times over. Out of season the coast is quiet, commuting and school runs set the pace, and local debate turns on building along the shoreline, industrial jobs and the costs of the 2020 county mergers and splits.

The coast lives on seafood. Shrimp, bought boiled from the boats and fish counters, is eaten on white bread with mayonnaise and lemon as the southern summer meal, while crab parties in late summer and the opening of the lobster season in autumn are social occasions. Mackerel is grilled or smoked in summer, and cod, pollock and flatfish are the everyday catch. Kristiansand's fish market and the harbour restaurants of the coastal towns are the places to eat it.

Vestfold is one of Norway's best farming districts, producing grain, potatoes, vegetables, apples and strawberries sold from roadside stalls in July. Inland Telemark and Setesdal keep the older mountain diet of lamb and mutton, cured meats known as spekemat, trout from the lakes, flatbrød and lefse, and rømmegrøt, a sour-cream porridge served with butter, sugar and cinnamon at celebrations.

The south was long the most temperate corner of Norway in the other sense, but microbreweries now operate in several coastal towns, and aquavit and beer accompany the Christmas table as elsewhere. Summer coffee and waffles with brown cheese are served at almost every guest harbour.

The Sørlandet coast is a long chain of white-painted wooden towns, skerries and small beaches. Kristiansand has the grid-planned wooden quarter of Posebyen, the Christiansholm fortress, the fish market, the Odderøya peninsula and the large zoo and amusement park outside town. East of it lie Lillesand, Grimstad with its Ibsen museum, Arendal's old quarter Tyholmen, the island village of Lyngør and the white town of Risør; west of it are Mandal, with the long sandy beach of Sjøsanden, the Lindesnes lighthouse at mainland Norway's southern tip, and the old Dutch quarter of Flekkefjord. Raet National Park protects islands and sea near Arendal and Grimstad.

Vestfold has Tønsberg, with the ruins of its medieval royal castle on the Slottsfjell hill, the Viking burial mounds of Borre, Sandefjord's whaling museum and the coastal town of Stavern. In Telemark, Ibsen's childhood home stands at Skien, where the Telemark Canal begins. Its locks and lakes, completed in 1892, climb past the flight of locks at Vrangfoss to Dalen, where a wooden dragon-style hotel of 1894 awaits the boats. Nearby stands Heddal stave church, the largest in Norway.

Rjukan lies in a valley so deep that mirrors on the mountainside reflect sunlight into the town square in winter. The Vemork power station houses the Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum and the story of the heavy-water sabotage, and the peak of Gaustatoppen, at about 1,880 metres, looks over much of southern Norway. Setesdal leads north into high moorland around Bykle and Hovden.