Kristiansand

Kristiansand kommune Capital of Southern Norway
Municipality
Panorama view of downtown area, include Odderpya Forest Park, Wergeland's Park and Stener Weyedahis Park
Coat of arms Vest-Agder within Norway
Kristiansand within Vest-Agder
Coordinates: 58°10′12″N 8°0′22″E / 58.17000°N 8.00611°E / 58.17000; 8.00611Coordinates: 58°10′12″N 8°0′22″E / 58.17000°N 8.00611°E / 58.17000; 8.00611
Country	Norway
County	Vest-Agder
District	Sørlandet
Administrative centre	Kristiansand
Government
• Mayor (2011)	Arvid Grundekjøn (H)
Area
• Total	277 km2 (107 sq mi)
• Land	259 km2 (100 sq mi)
Area rank	287 in Norway
Population (2013)
• Total	85,618
• Rank	5 in Norway
• Density	291/km2 (750/sq mi)
• Change (10 years)	10.9 %
Demonym	Kristiansander[1]
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
ISO 3166 code	NO-1001
Official language form	Bokmål
Website	www.kristiansand.kommune.no
Data from Statistics Norway

 Kristiansand (help·info) ^[2] is a city, municipality and the county capital of Vest-Agder county in Southern Norway. Kristiansand municipality is the fifth largest in Norway, with a population of 84,476 as of 1 October 2013.^[3] The Kristiansand urban area, entirely located in the municipality, had a population of 154,346 on 1 January 2013, and is thus the fifth largest urban area in Norway. In addition, Statistics Norway counts 4 other densely populated areas in the municipality: Skålevik (Flekkerøy) with a population of 3,026, Strai with a population of 1,636, Justvik with a population of 1,803^[4] and Tveit with a population of 1,396 (as of January 2012).

Name

The city is named for King Christian IV, who founded it on 5 July 1641. The second element, sand, refers to the sandy headland the city was built on (see also Lillesand).

The name was written Christianssand until 1877, when under an official spelling reform it was changed to Kristianssand. (Kristiansund and Kristiania, now Oslo, had their spellings changed under the same reform.) A number of businesses and associations retain the "Ch" spelling. The name was again changed to its present form, Kristiansand, in 1889.

In 2012, the city's mayor, Arvid Grundekjøn, proposed that the city be renamed Christianssand, arguing that "Kristiansand" is grammatically meaningless and that Christianssand stands for tradition.^[5]

History

The Kristiansand area has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In 1996 the well-preserved skeleton of a woman dating to approximately 6500 BC was discovered in the neighboring municipality of Søgne, which demonstrates very early habitation of the archipelago. Grauthelleren (Grathelleren) on Fidjane is believed to be a Stone Age settlement. The first discovery in Norway of a Sarup enclosure (a Neolithic form of ritual enclosure first identified at Sarup on the Danish island of Funen) was made in 2010 at Hamresanden and dates to c. 3400 BC. Archaeological excavations to the east of Oddernes Church have uncovered rural settlements that existed during the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of our era. Together with a corresponding discovery in Rogaland, these are unique in the Norwegian context; isolated farms, rather than villages, were the norm in ancient Norway. Other discoveries in grave mounds around the church, in the Lund section of the city, indicate habitation beginning c. 400 AD, and 25 cooking pits that were found immediately outside the church wall in 1907 are probably even older. One of the largest pre-Christian burial grounds in South Norway was formerly located to the south and west of the church. A royal centre is thought to have existed at Oddernes before 800, and the church was built around 1040.

Before the stone church was built, one or perhaps two wooden post churches are believed to have stood on the same spot. A few years ago, excavations were carried out under and around the runestone when it was moved to the church porch; the grave finds indicated that the churchyard must already have been unusually large in the High Middle Ages. This means that the area must have had a large population before it was reduced by the Black Death.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, there was already a busy port and a small village on the Otra at the lowest point of today's Lund neighborhood (Lahelle). Another important element in the development of Kristiansand was the harbor on the island of Flekkerøy, which was the most important on the Skagerrak beginning in the 16th century and was first fortified under King Christian III in 1555. In 1635, King Christian IV ordered his feudal seigneur, Palle Rosenkrantz, to move from Nedenes and build a royal palace on the island.

In any event, Christian IV visited the location in 1630 and 1635, and on 5 July 1641 formally founded the town of Christianssand on the "sand" on the opposite bank of the Torridalselva (Otra). The town was laid out in Renaissance style on a grid plan (the central section now known as Kvadraturen), and merchants throughout Agder were commanded to move to the new town. In return, they were to receive a variety of trading privileges and a ten-year tax exemption. In 1666, Christianssand became a garrison town, and in 1682, King Christian V decided to relocate the bishopric there from Stavanger.

Christianssand experienced a first and devastating fire in 1734. Later in the 18th century, after the American Revolutionary War, the town's shipbuilders experienced a boom that lasted until the Napoleonic Wars, when the continental blockade and naval warfare struck trade a severe blow. Denmark–Norway supported France and was subjected to relentless attack by Britain, as recounted in Ibsen's Terje Vigen. Only in the 1830s did the economy begin to recover, and the growth in the Norwegian shipping industry was important for Christianssand.

Another important development during the 19th century was the foundation in 1881 of Eg Sindssygeasyl, the second central psychiatric institution in Norway, after Gaustad. The psychiatric hospital drew highly specialized doctors to the city and also provided many jobs for women.

The last major fire, in 1892, left half the original section of the city in ashes, as far as the cathedral, which had been rebuilt in brick after a previous fire in 1880.

With the development of hydropower in southern Norway, the city gradually developed an industrial base, particularly with the establishment in 1910 of the nickel refinery Kristiansands Nikkelraffineringsverk AS (later Falconbridge Nikkelverk, now Glencore Nikkelverk). From an economic perspective, the First World War was a good time for Kristiansand, as a neutral shipping city. The crises that followed with the gold standard politics of the 1920s and the world economic crisis of the 1930s were also deeply felt in a trading city like Kristiansand.

The labour movement had important pioneers in the city, and Leon Trotsky spent about a year of his exile in the archipelago offshore from Kristiansand. Arnulf Øverland took him from Randesund to Ny-Hellesund in Søgne in 1936.^[6] In the interwar period Kristiansand was a centre for intellectuals, especially after the architect Thilo Schoder settled there in 1932.

Kristiansand was attacked by German naval forces on 9 April 1940 and occupied by a force of 800 men. Post-war construction included further development of the Lund section, and in the 1960s and 1970s Vågsbygd to the west was developed into a section with 20,000 inhabitants. In the 1980s, industry and business in the city declined. But beginning in the second half of the 1990s, business increased in momentum with the development of enterprises for marine and offshore equipment, security technology and drilling.

The older municipal archives for Kristiansand (and the former municipalities) are currently held at the Inter-Municipal Archives in Vest-Agder (IKAVA). This includes documents concerning, for example, local councils, chairmanships, poor boards, school boards and archives including among other things personal documents in the form of client records, tax records, and also school records.

Coat-of-arms

The arms of Kristiansand were granted on 8 December 1909 and are based on the oldest seal of the city, dating from 1643. In 1643 King Christian IV granted the young town the right to use a seal with the Norwegian lion and the royal crown. The crown indicates that the city was founded by the king. The other major element in the arms is a tree. As the species of tree is not specified, there are several known versions with differently shaped trees. A second seal, from 1658, shows a tree with leaves and what look like pine cones.^[7] On the base of the crown are the letters R. F. P., standing for Regna Firma Pietas, "Piety strengthens the realm"; this was Christian IV's motto. Around the seal of the city is its motto, Cavsa Triumphat Tandem Bona, "A good cause prevails in the end".^[8]

Climate and natural environment

• 

  Skippergada in the archipelago off Kristiansand

• 

  The River Otra runs through Kristiansand

• 

  Ravnedalen

• 

  Mouth of the River Tovdalselva, next to Kristiansand Airport, Kjevik

The parts of the Agder counties on the Skagerrak coast, including Kristiansand, have a temperate climate with warm summers and cool winters. Snow generally occurs only in late December and early January; it may be heavy (the snow record at Kjevik airport is 170 centimetres (67 in)) but rarely stays long on the coast; see Climate of Norway.

Kristiansand has temperate climate with warm summers and cool winters. The Gulf Stream provides local warming through surface currents along the Norwegian trench.

In the summer most locals go to the Fiskebrygga, the archipelago opposite the city, and Hamresanden Beach, which is located about 10 minutes from the city centre near Kjevik airport. People from Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and other European countries also visit this beach in the summer during their travels.

Near the city, there are deep woods. In Baneheia and at the former coastal artillery fortress on Odderøya, there are lighted ski trails and walking paths specially prepared for wheelchair users.

Two major rivers, the Otra and the Tovdalselva, flow into the Skagerak at Kristiansand.

Geography

Kristiansand is strategically located on the Skagerrak, and until the opening of the Kiel Canal between the North Sea and the Baltic was very important militarily and geopolitically. This meant that for centuries it served as a military stronghold, first as Harald Fairhair's royal residence, then as a Danish-Norwegian fortress, and later as a garrison town. Kristiansand is a gateway to and from the continent, with ferry service to Denmark and a terminus of the railway line along the southern edge of South Norway.

Geologically, this part of Agder is part of the Swedo-Norwegian Base Mountain Shield, the southwestern section of the Baltic Shield, and consists of two main geological formations of Proterozoic rocks that were formed in the Gothic and later Swedo-Norwegian orogenies, with significant metamorphism during the latter.^[9] There is a substrate of 1,600–1,450 million-year-old slate, quartzite, marble and amphibolite with some hornblende gneiss, and overlaid on this acidic surface structures of both granite and granodiorite (in general 1,250–1,000 million years old, in some places 1,550–1,480 million years old). The Bamblefelt geological area starts to the east of the municipality and extends to Grenland.

The last Swedo-Norwegian formations are evident in large formations of granite. There are also incidences of gabbro and diorite, less commonly eclogite. The Caledonian orogeny did not affect this area. Faults run southwest-northeast.^[10] In ancient times there was a volcano off Flekkeroy, which left deposits of volcanic rock just north of central Kristiansand, on the site of the estate of Eg, now occupied by the Hospital of Southern Norway.

Sea front, eastern port

Industry and economy

Christianssands Bryggeri is a producer of beer and soft drinks with a long history in the city. The brewery was established in 1859, and all products are made with spring water from the company's own spring, called Christian IVs kilde (Christian IV's spring).

Hennig-Olsen is an ice cream factory with headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Kristiansand. The factory opened in 1960, but the Hennig-Olsen family has produced ice cream in Kristiansand since 1924, when Sven Hennig-Olsen started doing so in the back of his tobacco kiosk.

Glencore Nikkelverk (nickel factory) was founded in 1910 as Kristiansand Nikkelraffineringsverk A/S. The company is owned by the Anglo-Swiss company Glencore Xstrata and has about 500 employees.^[11]

The Korsvik industrial area on the east side of the Kristiansandsfjord is home to companies working on drilling technology, cranes, winches and other equipment for the worldwide petroleum industry, among them National Oilwell Varco and Aker MH.

Elkem, owned by China National Bluestar since 2011, operated a refining plant for ferrosilicon and microsilica at Fiskå in Vågsbygd for many years and was replaced in the beginning of the 20th century by Elkem Solar which produces polycrystalline silicon for wafers used in the solar cell industry. It has about 225 employees.^[12]

As a relatively large shipping town, Kristiansand was a profitable location for shipbuilders Kristiansands Mekaniske Verksted and P. Høivolds Mekaniske Verksted. At one time, shipping companies were the backbone of the local economy, but not many survive. The Rasmussen Group, previously a shipping firm, is now an investment company.^[13][14] Kristiansand continues to have major shipbuilding and repair facilities that support Norway's North Sea oil industry. The static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross-Skagerak is located near Kristiansand.

The largest mall in Northern Europe, Sørlandssenteret (The Southern Norway Mall), is located outside the city centre but within Kristiansand municipality.

Culture

Kristiansand is a summer tourist destination, attracting many visitors in particular to its zoo, Kristiansand Zoo and Amusement Park, just east of the city. This is the second most visited attraction in Norway, after Holmenkollen, and had 925,000 visitors in 2012. Its animals, most of which are housed in natural habitats, include wolves, tigers, lions and the lynx. The zoo is open 365 days a year, while the amusement park is open during the summer season only.

The Quart festival was an annual music festival that took place in Kristiansand over five days in early July. There were large stages on Odderøya and smaller venues around the city. Founded in 1991 as Qvadradurmusivalen, the festival changed its name to the more catchy Quart Festival the following year. It included internationally known performers and was also known for booking acts that later became internationally known. For several years it was the largest music festival in Norway, but beginning in summer 2007 it was challenged by the Hovefestivalen on Tromøya, Arendal, and some Oslo-based festivals. In early June 2008 the organization declared bankruptcy; the festival returned in 2009 under the name Quart, but again went bankrupt.

Kristiansand is home to many other festivals as well, running throughout the year. Protestfestival, held in September, was launched in 2000 and aims to address apathy and indifference in politics, and includes debates, concerts and lectures combined with performance art and documentaries. Protestfestival claims to attract anarchists, communists, hippies as well as conservative Christians and capitalists and to encourage communication among these radically different groups.^[15] Others include Southern Discomfort, also in September, the Bragdøya Blues Festival in June, the Dark Season Festival in October, and Cultural Night and the International Children Film Festival in April.

Kristiansand has an active music scene as well. The Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra and Wind Ensemble merged in 2003. The orchestra now performs at the Kilden Performing Arts Centre, which opened in January 2012.^[16] This is also the new home of Agder Theatre, founded in 1991.

Sørlandets Art Museum is in the centre of Kristiansand, in the former buildings of the cathedral school. It was established in 1995 building on the former collection of Christiansands billedgalleri, and is the second-largest regional art museum in Norway. It includes both fine art and crafts and runs an extensive programme of activities that includes exhibitions of the permanent collection, temporary exhibitions of contemporary art, and touring exhibitions to schools and child-care facilities.^[17]

Christianssands Kunstforening, now renamed Kristiansand Kunsthall, is one of the oldest and largest art associations in Norway, founded in 1881, and has approximately 650 square metres (7,000 sq ft) of exhibition space for contemporary art in central Kristiansand. The association began assembling a permanent collection in 1902; this is now housed in Sørlandets Art Museum.

Cultiva, a local foundation, was established to ensure a portion of the profits made from selling shares in Agder Energy Ltd have lasting benefits to the community, focusing on art, culture, creativity and building competence; it supported projects in Kristiansand until the financial crisis forced cut-backs in 2011. In addition the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage endowed a cultural free port, Porto Rico, as one of the pilot projects of its "value creation project" in the 2000s.

In 2007 Kristiansand was awarded the designation Norges kulturkommune (Norway's culture municipality), a distinction awarded every other year by the Norwegian Culture Forum.

Fiskebrygga is a former fish landing on either side of the Gravane canal, which separates the city centre from Odderøya; it was refurbished in the 1990s and now has wood-fronted buildings housing restaurants and shops including a fish market. It is very popular in summer, when the canal is also heavily used by boats.

The city's best known football team, IK Start, moved in 2007 to a new home stadium, Sør Arena. The city is also home to other football teams, including Fløy (Flekkerøy), Vigør and IK Våg. Kristiansand is also known for its handball teams (Kristiansands IF and IK Våg Vipers), basketball (Kristiansand Pirates) and volleyball (Grim VBK) clubs and has a baseball team (Kristiansand Suns).

Education and research

The University of Agder was established in 2007, based on Agder College, which had been founded in 1994 by the amalgamation of six previous institutions: Kristiansand Teacher Training College, Agder District College, Kristiansand College of Nursing, Arendal College of Nursing, Agder Engineering and District College (Grimstad) and Agder Conservatory of Music. The university has about 10,000 students, of whom 7,500 are in Kristiansand and the remaining 2,500 in Grimstad. In Kristiansand it is housed on a campus on the former parade ground of Gimlemoen in the Lund section. The university offers a wide range of studies at all levels, organised into five faculties: Humanities and Education, Engineering and Science, Health and Sport, Economics and Social Sciences, and Fine Arts. Gimlemoen is also the site of Sørlandet kunnskapspark, a research park built with funds from sources including the Cultiva foundation that houses a number of companies with a degree of professional affiliation with the university, such as Agderforskning, a social science research institute that is part of the publishing company Cappelen Damm.

Noroff University College was established in 2012 and is a private university offering three specialised degrees two in Interactive media (Games or Animation) and one in Digital Forensics.

Kristiansand was a garrison and cathedral town from 1664; Kristiansand Cathedral School was founded in 1684 and a Latin school in 1734. There are currently four public senior secondary schools: Kristiansand Cathedral School Gimle, Vågsbygd Senior Secondary School, Kvadraturen Senior Secondary School and Tangen Senior Secondary School.

Private senior secondary schools include Noroff Senior Secondary School and Sonans utdanning (education). The private school Sørlandets Maritime Senior Secondary School is also based in Kristiansand. This school offers two courses of study, Technology and Industrial Production and maritime subjects. It is a boarding school; students live and undergo training aboard the training ship MS Sjøkurs, a steamer that previously operated on the Hurtigruten.

People from Kristiansand

Transportation

Kristiansand is an important transport and communications node, connected to continental Europe by air and sea. From the city centre, the ferry harbour has routes to Hirtshals (Denmark) and Hanstholm (Denmark).^[18] The city has road connections via European route E18^[19] east to Arendal and Oslo, via European route E39 west to Mandal and Stavanger, and via National Road 9 north to Vennesla, Setesdal, Hovden and Haukeli.^[20] The Sørlandsbanen railway station in the city centre is a terminus; trains go east to Oslo and west to Stavanger.^[21] The local airport, Kjevik, is located 12 km (7.5 mi) east of the city and has routes to European and Norwegian cities.

Buses in the city and region are now operated by Nettbuss Sør (South): until the end of 2010 they were run by Bussen Trafikkselskap.

International relations

Twin towns – Sister cities

Kristiansand is twinned with:

Gdynia, Poland Hjørring, Denmark Kerava, Finland Letchworth, United Kingdom Münster, Germany[22]

Orléans, France Rajshahi, Bangladesh Reykjanesbær, Iceland Trollhättan, Sweden

Demography and pictures

Historical population
Year	Pop.	±%
1951	25,797	—
1960	27,760	+7.6%
1970*	56,119	+102.2%
1980	60,738	+8.2%
1990	64,888	+6.8%
2000	72,395	+11.6%
2007	77,840	+7.5%
2008	78,919	+1.4%
2009	80,109	+1.5%
Source: Statistics Norway. * merged with suburban municipalities in 1964.

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  Kristiansand Boardwalk

• 

  Christiansholm

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  Odderøya lighthouse at dusk

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  Gravane

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  Oksøy Lighthouse

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  Area around Våg

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  Odderøya lighthouse

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  Tveit church

• 

  Fiskebryggan

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kristiansand.

Look up Kristiansand in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Municipal fact sheet from Statistics Norway
• Vest-Agder travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Kristiansand travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Kristiansand Virtual Tour, 360* Panoramic Pictures (QTVR)
• Visit Kristiansand website
• The Official Website of the Kristiansand Region
• Winter in the Kristiansand Region
• Explore the Kristiansand Region
• What to do in the Kristiansand region
• Regional tourist information
• Kristiansand – a flourishing city
• Kristiansand, summer VIDEO
• Port of Kristiansand
• Only Ski field in Kristiansand – also in English
• Tall Ships Races 2010

References

v t e Municipalities of Vest-Agder Åseral Audnedal Farsund Flekkefjord Hægebostad Kristiansand Kvinesdal Lindesnes Lyngdal Mandal Marnardal Sirdal Søgne Songdalen Vennesla

v t e Most populous urban areas of Norway As of 2012, according to Statistics Norway 1. Oslo 925,242 2. Bergen 238,098 3. Stavanger/Sandnes 201,353 4. Trondheim 167,598 5. Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg 105,545 6. Drammen 101,995 7. Porsgrunn/Skien 88,860 8. Kristiansand 70,204 9. Tromsø 57,015 10. Tønsberg 49,093 11. Ålesund 48,460 12. Haugesund 44,524 13. Moss 43,553 14. Sandefjord 42,212 15. Bodø 38,326 16. Arendal 33,778 17. Hamar 30,921 18. Larvik 24,422 19. Halden 23,897 20. Lillehammer 20,857 21. Molde 20,132 22. Harstad 19,983 23. Kongsberg 19,861 24. Gjøvik 19,261 25. Askøy 19,138 26. Horten 18,713 27. Mo i Rana 18,317 28. Kristiansund 17,456 29. Jessheim 17,319 30. Hønefoss 14,860 31. Alta 14,439 32. Narvik 14,035 33. Elverum 13,913 34. Ski 13,891 35. Askim 13,407 36. Drøbak 13,006 37. Nesoddtangen 12,020 38. Steinkjer 11,908 39. Vennesla 11,894 40. Leirvik 11,670 41. Grimstad 11,662 42. Kongsvinger 11,589 43. Stjørdalshalsen 11,416 44. Råholt 11,070 45. Mandal 10,884 46. Egersund 10,874 47. Bryne 10,514 48. Åkrehamn/Veavågen 10,216