{"id":5876,"date":"2020-05-12T09:51:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T09:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/?post_type=aktiviteter&p=5876"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:04:08","slug":"museum-nord-brings-the-history-of-narvik-to-life","status":"publish","type":"aktiviteter","link":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/aktiviteter\/museum-nord-brings-the-history-of-narvik-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum Nord brings the history of Narvik to life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\tFrom being just a single farm, Narvik was transformed into a centre of growth and the most modern town in Northern Norway in just five years. Museum Nord gives you the full, fast and fascinating story of the many sides of Narvik.\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

In 1890, Narvik was the name of a farm. Most cargo and passenger traffic was by ship along the coast, and the area here at the head of the Ofotfjord was pretty remote and had only a very small population. There was however a need for the iron ore from the mines in the mountains of Northern Sweden to be transported to the coast, which meant the ice-free Northern Norwegian coast, not Bottenvika (the Bothnian Bay on the Swedish coast of the Baltic), which is ice-bound for half the year. Various alternatives were studied, including both S\u00f8rreisa in Troms and Rana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Knut Hansvold<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The iron ore railway created an industrial boom <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Construction of the first railway to transport the iron ore was begun in 1884 by an English company, which unfortunately went bankrupt and all work stopped when the track had only reached as far as Katterat up by the Swedish border. It was not until 1897 that the Norwegian parliament, Stortinget, and the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen, resolved to revive the project as a joint state-run venture. On 15 November 1902, the first train went from the Kiruna mines in Sweden to Narvik, which grew virtually overnight into a major industrial port. Large three-dimensional models in Museum Nord show the rapid transformation of the town, and you can also sit in an old railway carriage and follow the journey up to the border on black-and-white film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography captured the turmultuous years of the 20th Century <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Museum Nord possesses an archive of 200,000 photographs, a discerning selection of which is presented by the museum stairs. Here one can wander through black-and-white images from the days before Narvik\u2019s emergence, through the hectic years of construction, the elegant town with painted wooden houses of the 1920s and \u201930s, the destruction wrought during the war, and the post-war reconstruction in Functionalist style. Pictures from a Sami wedding dating from the pre-industrial period say something about the huge cultural changes that took place with the sudden upheavals at the turn of the 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carl Knutsen captured urban growth in Narvik through the last century <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another photography collection from the photographer Carl Knutsen is devoted to urban Narvik. The history of the town, with the painted wooden houses from the 1930s in Swiss Chalet and Art Nouveau\/Jugend style, the architecture of the post-war reconstruction period from the 1950s and \u201960s, and the restoration work and additional buildings constructed in the early 21st century, is vividly evoked by showing, in chronological sequence, photographs of the exact same spot taken in three different decades. The effect is striking.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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