Trøndelag

The farmlands around the Trondheimsfjord supported powerful chieftains, the earls of Lade, in the Viking Age, and whoever held Trøndelag held much of Norway. King Olav Tryggvason founded a trading town at the mouth of the Nidelva in 997, and Olav Haraldsson, who pushed Christianity on the country, fell at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. Within a year he was declared a saint, and his shrine in Nidaros, the old name of Trondheim, drew pilgrims from across northern Europe.

The cathedral built over his grave from about 1070 became the seat of an archbishopric in the 1150s whose province reached Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes and the Orkneys. Norway's kings were crowned there, and Trondheim remained the country's spiritual capital even after power moved south to Bergen and Oslo. The Reformation of 1537 ended the archbishopric and the pilgrimages.

In 1644 copper was found at Røros, and the mining town that grew up on the bare plateau worked until 1977. After a fire in 1681 Trondheim was rebuilt with wide streets to stop fire spreading, and in 1718–19 a Swedish army invaded the region, only for thousands of its retreating soldiers to freeze to death in the Tydal mountains. During the Second World War the Germans made Trondheim a major naval and submarine base. Restoration of the cathedral, begun in 1869, lasted more than a century, and in 2018 the two counties of Nord- and Sør-Trøndelag merged back into a single Trøndelag.

Trønders have a strong regional identity and a dialect known across Norway for clipped word endings and distinctive palatal sounds, heard in the region's popular rock and pop music, a genre called trønderrock. Football support for Rosenborg, Trondheim's club and for years the dominant side in Norway, is part of local pride, as is a good-humoured rivalry with Bergen and Oslo.

St Olav remains at the centre of the calendar. The St Olav Festival fills Trondheim with concerts and a medieval market around Olsok, the anniversary of his death on 29 July, and at Stiklestad a large open-air play about the king's last days has been performed every summer since the 1950s. Pilgrims walk the revived St Olav Ways from Oslo and from Sweden to the cathedral.

Trøndelag is also part of the Southern Sámi homeland, whose reindeer herders use the mountains along the Swedish border, with cultural centres at Snåsa and Røros. Røros keeps the memory of the mining community alive through its winter fair, Rørosmartnan, first held in February 1854, and through the novels of Johan Falkberget, who wrote about the miners' lives.

Trondheim has about 215,000 people and is Norway's third city, dominated by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the SINTEF research institute, which make it a centre for engineering, technology and start-ups. Tens of thousands of students keep the city young. Stjørdal, Levanger, Steinkjer and Namsos along the fjord and further north are smaller towns, and Røros has around 5,500 people in its municipality.

Outside the city the economy rests on farming — the Trondheimsfjord district is one of Norway's major dairy and grain areas — along with forestry, fishing and, above all, salmon farming on Hitra and Frøya, where some of the world's largest aquaculture companies are based. The air base at Ørland hosts Norway's new fighter jets, and tourism centres on Trondheim and Røros.

Life follows the seasons strongly. Winters are short on daylight, and people make the most of skiing trails on the edge of Trondheim's Bymarka forest, while summers mean cabins, boats and long evenings on the fjord. Local debates concern the growth of Trondheim, wind farms on the coastal mountains and the Fosen peninsula, where turbines built on Sámi reindeer pastures were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

Trøndelag's festive dish is sodd, a clear broth of mutton or beef with small meatballs and diced meat, eaten with flatbrød at weddings and confirmations. The region is equally known for karsk, a mixture of weak coffee and strong home-distilled spirit, traditionally made by placing a coin in the cup, pouring coffee until it disappears and then adding spirit until it can be seen again.

The fertile shores of the Trondheimsfjord supply dairy products, grain, meat and vegetables, and the Inderøy peninsula has a food trail, the Golden Detour, of farm shops, a brewery and cheese-makers. Røros is known for dairy produce from its mountain farms, and the uplands supply game and lake fish. The coast brings salmon, cod and other white fish, and Frøya and Hitra are among Norway's main salmon-farming islands.

Trondheim itself has become one of Norway's food cities, with restaurants built around local produce, a farmers' market in the main square and a strong café culture. Traditional baking includes lefse and flatbrød, and waffles and brown cheese appear at every mountain hut.

Trondheim's centre is compact. Nidaros Cathedral, the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world, has a west front lined with statues of saints and kings; beside it the Archbishop's Palace holds Norway's crown regalia. The Old Town Bridge leads across the Nidelva to Bakklandet, a quarter of wooden houses and cafés, and the colourful wharf storehouses line the river. Kristiansten fortress looks down on the city, the island of Munkholmen, once a monastery and then a prison, sits in the fjord, and the Ringve museum at Lade collects musical instruments.

Inland, Røros is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed with its surrounding mining landscape, where dark timber houses line streets running up to the church of 1784, and the old smelting works is now a museum beside the slag heaps. The Olav's Mine outside town can be visited on guided tours. Stiklestad, near Verdal, has a national cultural centre on the battlefield, and Oppdal is a base for ski runs and for musk-ox safaris on Dovrefjell.

The Atlantic coast is a scatter of skerries and low islands. Hitra and Frøya have fishing villages such as Titran, sandy beaches and red deer, the Fosen peninsula holds the Renaissance manor of Austrått, and further north Rørvik on Vikna has the Norveg coastal museum, looking over one of the richest fishing grounds in Norway.