Oslo

Norway’s capital was founded at the end of the Viking Age, in 1040, under the name Ánslo, and established as a trading place eight years later by Harald Hardrada. It became a bishopric in 1070 and the country’s capital under Haakon V around 1300. Fire destroyed it in 1624; Christian IV rebuilt it closer to Akershus Fortress and put his own name on it, and Christiania it stayed until 1925. The 1948 merger with Aker, a municipality twenty-seven times larger than the city it surrounded, created the Oslo of today, a capital of 724,290 people that is also a county in its own right.