Sandnes

Sandnes lies at the very end of Gandsfjorden, where the flat farmland of Jæren meets the hills to the east. The old centre is a grid of streets laid out after it became a town in 1860, with Langgata, one of the longest pedestrian streets in Norway, as its spine. Swiss-style wooden houses still set the tone. The oldest, Nygaardshuset at Langgata 8, was built around 1835 and is older than the town itself.

Stavanger is just up the fjord, and the two have grown into one urban area of about 244.000 people, but Sandnes still feels like its own place. Many work in oil-related offices at Forus. The name is Old Norse, from sandr, a stretch of sand, and nes, a headland, though nobody is quite sure which headland.

Local knowledge: Sandnes became a ladested in 1860, against the wishes of Stavanger, which feared for its own trade. The town was built on clay: brickworks from the 1780s, then potteries, and the clay cuckoo whistle on the town arms. Then came the bicycles. Jonas Øglænd ran a shop in Sandnes from 1868, his sons got the Scandinavian agency for the American bicycle The World, and soon the family was building its own. In 1932 they held a contest to name the bike, and a 12-year-old boy, Knut Johansen, won with DBS, short for Den Beste Sykkel, the best bicycle. In the 1960s Øglænd had 90 % of the Norwegian market. The factory closed in 2000, but Sandnes still calls itself the bicycle town, with red-painted cycle lanes and city bikes to borrow.

Born here: Julie Ege (1943–2008), daughter of a brickworks worker, played in the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service and later trained as a nurse. Ceramic designer Kåre Berven Fjeldsaa (1918–1992) won gold at the Milan Triennale in 1954.

Visiting: the pin points to the tourist information at Vågsgata 22, next to the train and bus station. It is open on weekdays all year, and lends out free city bikes in summer. On a rainy day, Vitenfabrikken in Storgata is a science centre with a planetarium and the town museum, full of local pottery and bicycles. It stands in the block where Øglænd made bikes, and the oat mill from 1912 inside still has its machinery as it was when work stopped in 1988. Since 2020 most of Lysefjorden belongs to Sandnes, Kjerag included, while Preikestolen on the north side went to Strand. Drive east to the ferry from Lauvvik to Oanes, where the Ryfylke Scenic Route begins.

Fact sheet

• People: 85.785 in Sandnes municipality (Sandnes itself is too small for Statistics Norway's count of urban settlements)
• County: Rogaland
• Town since: 1860 (as a loading place)
• Typical industries: oil and gas services, staffing and recruitment agencies, car sales and repair

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).