Arendal

History

The village of Arendal was established in the middle of the 16th century, and was then called . Initially, it had no formal town status. It was part of the prestegjeld of Øyestad going back for centuries. In 1610, the village was declared a ladested, a port of loading with special trading rights. The village sat at the mouth of the river Nidelva and timber was floated down the river from the vast inland forests and it was loaded onto boats and shipped elsewhere at Arendal. When the town of Christianssand was founded by King Christian IV in 1641, he granted those citizens a monopoly on all trade in Nedenæs and Lister og Mandal counties (including the area of Arendal). This grant, intended to subsidise Christianssand and its fortifications, placed existing towns and ports in those counties in a difficult position. Both towns and the peasants in the rural countryside protested the hardships this caused. As a result, Arendal received royal permission in 1622 to continue as a loading-place for timber until a means could be found to transfer its trade to Christianssand, but Arendal had to pay a special tax of 750 riksdaler each year for this special privilege. A ferry service across the harbor basin to Kolbjørnsvik was started by Kolbjørn in 1893 with SF Colbjørn. The service still runs, since 1980 with MF Kolbjørn III. Around the turn of the twentieth century, when thousands of Norwegians sought to take advantage of the more stable economic climate of the United States by emigrating from a ship named Thomas Gundersen, many of those from Arendal took their economic traditions with them. In New York City and the surrounding areas, a great deal of Americans who claim Norwegian ancestry can trace their roots to Arendal, as a great deal of Norwegian sailors, trimmers,…

Most-observed species

• Hooded Crow

  Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,901
• Herring Gull

  Larus argentatus Pontoppidan, 1763 · Aves
  4,938
• Graylag Goose

  Anser anser (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,639
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,632
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,610
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,542
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,406
• Common Eider

  Somateria mollissima (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,129

Most recent

• M 2.7 — 2005-04-26
  24 km N of Hirtshals, Denmark