Stavanger, Norway

Stavanger was settled over 12,000 years ago, because of the natural deep water harbor. It is the 4th largest city in Norway with a population of 140,000. It’s name comes from the words Stav, meaning hills with oak trees and Vanger, meaning harbor. The original industry was timber, then preserving herring in the 1800s and then canning both fish and vegetables. Now it is a tourist destination and is involved in the oil and gas industries.

We did a walking tour of the town. Our first stop was at the Canning Museum. It was interesting to see the old equipment and hear how much labor was manual when this industry was first started. It eventually became mechanized, but the drying of the sardines was still a hands on job. The smokers, the men who dried the fish, were the best paid and were usually well to do. After seeing the canning museum we walked through Gamle Stavanger with all of the old homes. They were in good repair and most had beautiful gardens. We went to a cafe that was in a building built in the 1700s and is still owned by descendants of the original owners. We got to taste 4 different types of sardines.

Our tour continued on the the town’s cathedral. It will be celebrating it’s 900th birthday in 2025 and was totally covered in scaffolding since the entire building is being renovated. It was built by the king of Denmark in payment for a divorce from his then wife so he could marry a beautiful young girl from Stavanger. It seats 800, but at the time it was built the population of Stavanger was only 150.

Norway is among the top 10 fishing nations and exports 140,000,000 seafood dinners a day.

We passed the town library which is used as a center for most of the towns activities. Our guide told us that Norwegians read more books and newspapers per capita than any other country. She also said that Norwegians are prolific knitters, using the wool from the 2 million sheep that call Norway home.

In the 1970s oil was discovered off the coast and it changed Stavanger. It brought in many people from other countries and the city became more cosmopolitan. There are all kinds of restaurants serving many different cuisines. Although they are huge gas and oil producers, Norway exports almost all of it’s gas. This is because they use mostly electricity which is supplied by hydroelectric plants.

Our last stop on tour was to the former watchtower for the town. Men manned it day and night to alert the citizens of fire, since in the day, all the buildings were built of wood.

This was our second visit to Stavanger and again, we did something different and learned a great deal.