Brønnøysund

Brønnøysund is strung out along a narrow, crooked peninsula on the Helgeland coast, with a sound in front and hundreds of islands and skerries outside. From town you can see Torghatten, the hat-shaped mountain with a hole straight through it, out on the island of Torget. Hurtigruten calls twice a day, and the town likes to call itself "the coastal town in the middle of Norway".

It lives from the sea and, a bit unexpectedly, from paperwork. The ferry and bus company Torghatten has its head office here, and fishing and fish farming give far more jobs than in most of Norway. The other big employer is the state: Brønnøysundregistrene, the Brønnøysund Register Centre, keeps Norway's registers of companies, annual accounts, bankruptcies and a dozen other things.

Local knowledge: the name comes from the island Brønnøy, from Old Norse brunnr, a well or spring: sailors knew they could find fresh water here. Brønnøysund became a ladested in 1923. The moment that changed it came in 1980. A new law on pledges needed one central, computerised register instead of books kept by hand at nearly 100 district courts around the country, and the job went to the district court in Brønnøy. The register started with 14 employees. In 1988 the Register of Business Enterprises replaced 96 local trade registers, and in 1995 came the register that gives every Norwegian company its organisation number. Today the registers employ about 430 people, most of them in Havnegata in the centre. That's why every business owner in Norway knows the name Brønnøysund, whether they've been here or not.

Born here: physician Kåre Rodahl (1917–2008) spent the winter of 1939–40 on Clavering Island in East Greenland, where his work on polar bear liver helped explain why it's poisonous: far too much vitamin A. Footballer Ulrik Saltnes (born 1992) scored twice against Lazio in 2025, when Bodø/Glimt became the first Norwegian club to reach a European semi-final.

Visiting: the pin points to Visit Helgeland's tourist information, in an old wooden house on Sømnaveien about five minutes' walk from the guest harbour. Over the Brønnøysund bridge and out the road lies Torghatten, where a path takes you up to the hole in 15–20 minutes. The hole is 160 metres long and up to 35 metres high. The legend says the troll Hestmannen shot an arrow after the girl Lekamøya, and the king of Sømnafjellet threw his hat in the way. Express boats run from town to Vega and the islands of the Vega Archipelago, a World Heritage site. On a rainy day, look into Brønnøy church if it's open: a stone church from 1870 built around medieval walls, with a wooden crucifix older than the Reformation.

Fact sheet

• People: 5.117 in Brønnøysund, 7.841 in Brønnøy municipality
• County: Nordland
• Town since: 1923 (as a loading place)
• Typical industries: ferries and shipping (Torghatten), fishing and fish farming, buses and road transport

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).