Bergen

Trading here may have begun in the 1020s, and tradition credits King Olav Kyrre with founding the city in 1070 as Bjørgvin, the green meadow among the mountains. It was Norway’s capital in the thirteenth century, then a Hanseatic League bureau city, and until 1789 it held the exclusive right to broker trade between Northern Norway and the outside world, which is why it stayed the country’s largest city until the 1830s. What survives of the old quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site. Seven mountains ring the centre, and the port is Norway’s busiest for both freight and passengers.