Kristiansand

History

The Kristiansand area has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In 1996, the well-preserved skeleton of a woman dating to approximately 6500 BC was discovered in Søgne, just west of the city of Kristiansand. This demonstrates very early habitation of the archipelago. Grauthelleren (Grathelleren), located on Fidjane, is believed to be a Stone Age settlement. The first discovery in Norway of a Sarup enclosure (a Neolithic form of ritual enclosure first identified at Sarup on the Danish island of Funen) was made in 2010 at Hamresanden and dates to c. 3400 BC. Archaeological excavations to the east of Oddernes Church have uncovered rural settlements that existed during the centuries immediately before and after the start of the common era. Together with a corresponding discovery in Rogaland, these settlements are unique in the Norwegian context; isolated farms, rather than villages, were the norm in ancient Norway. Other discoveries in grave mounds around the church, in the Lund section of the city, indicate habitation beginning c. 400 AD, and 25 cooking pits that were found immediately outside the church wall in 1907 are probably even older. One of the largest pre-Christian burial grounds in South Norway was formerly located to the south and west of the church. A royal centre is thought to have existed at Oddernes before 800, and the church was built around 1040. Before the stone church was built, one or perhaps two wooden post churches are believed to have stood on the same spot. A few years ago, excavations were carried out under and around the runestone when it was moved to the church porch; the grave finds indicated that the churchyard must already have been unusually large in the High Middle Ages. This means that the area must have had a large…

Geography

The city of Kristiansand is strategically located on the Skagerrak, and until the opening of the Kiel Canal between the North Sea and the Baltic was very important militarily and geopolitically. This meant that for centuries it served as a military stronghold, first as Harald Fairhair's royal residence, then as a Danish-Norwegian fortress, and later as a garrison town. Kristiansand is a gateway to and from the continent, with ferry service to Denmark and a terminus of the railway line along the southern edge of South Norway. Geologically, this part of Agder is part of the Swedo-Norwegian Base Mountain Shield, the southwestern section of the Baltic Shield, and consists of two main geological formations of Proterozoic rocks that were formed in the Gothic and later Swedo-Norwegian orogenies, with significant metamorphism during the latter. There is a substrate of 1,600–1,450 million-year-old slate, quartzite, marble and amphibolite with some hornblende gneiss, and overlaid on this acidic surface structures of both granite and granodiorite (in general 1,250–1,000 million years old, in some places 1,550–1,480 million years old). The Bamblefelt geological area starts to the east of the municipality and extends to Grenland. The last Swedo-Norwegian formations are evident in large formations of granite. There are also incidences of gabbro and diorite, less commonly eclogite. The Caledonian orogeny did not affect this area. Faults run southwest–northeast. In ancient times there was a volcano off Flekkeroy, which left deposits of volcanic rock just north of central Kristiansand, on the site of the estate of , now occupied by the Hospital of Southern Norway. Near the city, there are deep woods. In Baneheia and at the former coastal artillery fortress on…

Most-observed species

• Hooded Crow

  Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  12,751
• Herring Gull

  Larus argentatus Pontoppidan, 1763 · Aves
  12,472
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  12,315
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  11,947
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  11,305
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  10,392
• Mew Gull

  Larus canus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  10,318
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  9,444

Most recent

• M 2.6 — 2008-01-24
  North Sea
• M 4.4 — 2007-01-28
  28 km S of Vestbygd, Norway
• M 3.1 — 2005-10-28
  61 km SSW of Mandal, Norway
• M 2.9 — 2004-09-28
  67 km SSW of Mandal, Norway