Skien

Skien sits where the Telemark waterway reaches the sea. The river from Norsjø splits around Klosterøya into two falls and drops into the harbour at the top of Skienselva, and from there the town climbs steep hills on both sides. It's a brick town, with Skien Church and its two pointed towers at the top of the main street up from the water.

Skien and Porsgrunn have grown together along the river, and Statistics Norway counts them as one urban area, Porsgrunn/Skien, with 97.240 people. Skien is the shopping and administration town of Telemark, and its biggest private employer is ABB, whose factory makes switchgear for the power grid. The name probably comes from Skiða, an Old Norse river name that may mean "split", and the coat of arms plays along with a pair of skis and ski poles.

Local knowledge: Skien is first named in Sverre's saga, in the story of a battle in 1184, and got its town charter from King Håkon VI in 1358. Since then it has burned nine times. The worst fire started on 8 August 1886 and took the whole centre, 241 properties in one day. The new plan, still the town plan today, laid out a broad axis from the water up to a new church, finished in 1894, and allowed only brick and stone in the centre. So the new Skien got French-inspired facades instead of wooden houses. Walk up to Snipetorp, which escaped the fire, and you see the older town: wooden houses from the late 1700s, Knud Ibsen's house among them.

Born here: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was born in Stockmanngården in the centre, lived in the Skien area until he was 15, and kept coming back to the town in his plays. Hjalmar Johansen (1867–1913) was the only man on both Nansen's Fram expedition across the Polar Sea and Amundsen's South Pole expedition.

Visiting: the pin points to the tourist information in the council's service centre at Henrik Ibsens gate 2, open on weekdays all year. Skien lock is the lowest of the 18 locks on the Telemark Canal, which climbs 72 metres over 105 kilometres to Dalen, and in summer the old canal boats M/S Victoria from 1882 and M/S Henrik Ibsen from 1907 sail the whole way. Ibsen's childhood home at Venstøp is being rebuilt and opens as a museum on 20 March 2028, his 200th birthday. Until then the Ibsen exhibition is at Telemark Museum in Brekkeparken, open from May until just before Christmas. On a rainy day, Skien Fritidspark has a water park with six pools, a slide and saunas.

Fact sheet

• People: 56.906 in Skien municipality (Skien itself is too small for Statistics Norway's count of urban settlements)
• County: Telemark
• Town since: 1358 (as a trading town)
• Typical industries: electrical equipment, with ABB's switchgear factory, hospital and health care, with Sykehuset Telemark, 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).