Arendal

Arendal is built around Pollen, a small inner harbour at the end of Galtesund, the sound between the islands of Hisøy and Tromøya. On summer evenings the restaurants around the harbour are full and boats lie close along the quay. Above it rises Tyholmen, the oldest part of town, with painted wooden houses, narrow lanes and the 82-metre brick tower of Trinity Church.

Tradition says the town was built on seven islets with canals between them. After the fires of the 1800s the canals were filled in, and the streets around Torvet now run where boats once did. Tyholmen survived, and the plan was to pull its old houses down one by one, until people changed their minds in the 1970s. About 45.700 people live in the urban area today.

Local knowledge: the name comes from Old Norse Arnárdalr, probably the valley of Arná, the eagle river. Arendal got full town rights in 1723 and by 1884 it was Norway's biggest shipping town, with about 500 ships. Two years later it all came down. Arendals Privatbank went bankrupt after its director had hidden losses with fraud, and firm after firm followed. In Barbu, the working-class district next to town, almost half the people were out of work, and many left for America. A meeting of workers' associations called in Arendal in 1887 founded the Norwegian Labour Party, and the shipowners never recovered in time for the switch to steam.

Born here: Jens Munk (1579–1628) led the king's expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1619, wintered in Hudson Bay, lost nearly all his men to scurvy and still got home to Bergen. Sam Eyde (1866–1940), son of an Arendal shipowner, co-founded Norsk Hydro, and the factory town of Eydehavn just north of Arendal carries his name.

Visiting: the pin points to the tourist information in the foyer of the culture house and town hall on Sam Eydes plass, open on weekdays. Over on Tyholmen, the old town hall facing the harbour was the tallest wooden house in Norway when merchant Morten Kallevig built it as his home in 1813–15. Small ferries cross from Tyholmen to the islands, and from spring to autumn one goes out to Merdø, an island in Raet National Park with a beach and an old skipper's home that is a museum in summer. On a rainy day, KUBEN, the county museum, has a whole exhibition on the crash of 1886. Take the glass lift from Torvet up to Fløyheia. In mid-August Arendalsuka, a week of political debate, fills every bed in town, so book early.

Fact sheet

• People: 45.668 in Arendal, 46.603 in Arendal municipality
• County: Agder
• Town since: 1723 (as a trading town)
• Typical industries: hospital and health care, with Sørlandet sykehus Arendal, car sales and repair, shops and retail

Population on 1 January 2026, from Statistics Norway. Typical industries are the ones with a much bigger share of the jobs here than in Norway as a whole (Statistics Norway, 2025).