Sandefjord

Sandefjord lies at the head of a long fjord, and the town makes sure you know what built it. Where Jernbanealléen meets the inner harbour, a bronze group of whalers in an open boat rides over the tail of a whale in a round pool. The whaling monument, by the sculptor Knut Steen, weighs 26 tonnes and turns slowly on its own axis. The brick centre behind it was laid out after the fire of 1900, with a straight line from the railway station down to the monument.

About 49.000 people live in the town and 67.000 in the municipality, which also has Torp airport and the head office of the paint maker Jotun. The name comes from the fjord, and the fjord from the old farm Sande, in Old Norse Sandar, "the sandbanks". Before whaling it was a spa town: from 1837 a doctor, Heinrich Thaulow, treated rheumatism here with sulphur water and baths in jellyfish.

Local knowledge: Sandefjord was a small ladested from 1680 and became a kjøpstad in 1845, but what made it came later. In 1903 the local shipowner Christen Christensen turned the steamship Admiralen into the world's first modern floating whale factory, and in 1905 he sent the first whaling expedition from Sandefjord to the Southern Ocean. By the late 1920s Sandefjord had 15 factory ships and more than 90 whale catchers. In 1954 more than 2.800 men from the area had signed on. Then the whales ran out. The last season was 1967–68, and by then the shipowners had moved over to tankers.

Born here: Dag Solstad (1941–2025), one of the central Norwegian novelists of his time, was born and grew up here. Karin Fossum (born 1954), often called the Norwegian queen of crime, writes the Inspector Sejer novels.

Visiting: the pin is at the whaling monument. A few hundred metres up Museumsgata, Hvalfangstmuseet is the rainy-day tip, open all year except Mondays outside summer. Lars Christensen gave it to the town in 1917, and the old hall is built around a full-size model of a blue whale. From mid-June to August you can go aboard Southern Actor at the museum quay, a whale catcher from 1950 and the only one from the modern whaling era still in original condition. For the Vikings, go to Gokstadhaugen just north-east of the centre, a park around the mound where the Gokstad ship, the largest Viking ship preserved anywhere, was dug out in 1880. Local brothers had started digging the winter before, hoping for treasure. Færder National Park lies off the coast to the south-east.

Fact sheet

• People: 49.186 in Sandefjord, 67.062 in Sandefjord municipality
• County: Vestfold
• Town since: 1680 (as a loading place), kjøpstad 1845
• Typical industries: wholesale trade, building trades such as electricians, plumbers and painters, care homes and residential care

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).