Molde

Molde stretches along the north shore of the Romsdalsfjord, a belt of houses and gardens some 11 kilometres long. The view is the thing here. Across the fjord the Romsdal mountains stand in a long jagged row, and from Varden, the viewpoint about 400 metres up behind the town, you can count 222 peaks. Locals call it the Molde panorama.

Molde is the county town of Møre og Romsdal, home to the county administration, the bishop and a university college. There's more industry than you'd expect: Brunvoll builds ship thrusters here and Glamox makes lights. The name was first a farm name, Old Norse Moldar, the plural of mold, soil. Molde became a kjøpstad in 1742, the same year as Kristiansund. When fjord tourism took off in the late 1800s, its gardens and avenues earned it the nickname "the town of roses", and Kaiser Wilhelm II came every summer until the First World War.

Local knowledge: for a few days in April 1940, Molde was the capital of Norway. German planes had attacked the town since 17 April, and on 23 April the government arrived. The ministers stayed at the villa Knausen, King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav at Glomstua. On 28 April, during a bombing raid, the king and the crown prince took cover under a birch in the woods by Glomstua. Per Bratland's photo of the two of them there became one of the best-known pictures of the occupation. Much of the centre burned, the wooden church from 1887 with it. The original Kongebjørka is gone, but a new birch grows on the spot, and next to it is Fredslunden, the peace grove, where writers and heads of state have planted trees since 1997.

Born here: Kjell Magne Bondevik (born 1947) was prime minister of Norway twice, from 1997 to 2000 and from 2001 to 2005. Singer-songwriter Ane Brun (born 1976) grew up in a musical family in Molde and writes melancholy songs, mostly in English.

Visiting: the pin points to the tourist information in the Nord souvenir shop on Storgata, open all year. Look for the town hall from 1966, with the statue Rosepiken, the rose girl, outside, and the cathedral from 1957, a concrete basilica with a free-standing bell tower. Every July Moldejazz fills the town for six days. It started in 1961, and only Monterey has run longer without a break. On a rainy day, go to Romsdalsmuseet, open all year, with exhibitions in the Krona building and some 40 old houses from around Romsdal in the open-air part at Reknes, or swim at Moldebadet. West of town the road heads out to the Atlantic coast, to Askevågen and Farstadsanden.

Fact sheet

• People: 22.830 in Molde, 33.291 in Molde municipality
• County: Møre og Romsdal
• Town since: 1742 (as a trading town)
• Typical industries: ship thrusters and other metal products (Brunvoll), health services, with the new hospital at Hjelset, the county administration and state offices

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).