Skien in Ibsen's time

For the city in which the great poet grew up no longer exists. It was consumed by flames in a catastrophic fire on the night of August 8, 1886. Henrik Ibsen was then 58 years old and had long since left Skien. After the fire, a large-scale and modern reconstruction of the city was initiated. Henrik Ibsen never saw the new Skien.

The old Skien

The fire of 1886 marks the distinction between the old and the new Skien. The old Skien consisted mainly of wooden houses that surrounded Handelstorget, where the church, town hall and Latin school were located. Most of the houses were small and close together in the streets. The houses often had backyards with outbuildings, stables and space for some livestock.

In the finer streets, the houses were larger and more stately. These were the homes of the city's merchant bourgeoisie, skippers and shipowners, the so-called patricians. The Ibsen family belonged to and had deep and long roots in the patrician class in Skien.

The importance of the industrial area Broene and Vannveien

South of the town center lay the "Bridges " with factories, sawmills and various craft businesses. This area ran from Telemarksgata, over Bollefoss and out to the two islands of Smieøya and Klosterøya, which were connected by bridges over the waterfalls - Damfoss and Klosterfossen. This oak separates the upper Hjellevannet and the lower Bryggevannet where the difference in level is five meters. Over the centuries, these five meters have given Skien the power and industrial muscle to develop as a key Norwegian timber, industrial and export town.

Hjellevannet is the lowermost part of the Telemark watercourse, which extends all the way into the interior of Telemark, and Bryggevannet was connected to the sea via the Skienselva river. The waterway inland and out to sea was crucial to Skien's trade and exports as far back as the 10th century. 

When the Broene area burned down in 1936, it marked the end of a 400-year history in which the sawmills at Eidet had been Skien's economic backbone.

Klosterøya

Klosterøya was the site of the old Gimsøy monastery, which was a Benedictine monastery established around 1150. The monastery was later discontinued and became the administrative center for the unsuccessful attempts to establish large-scale mining operations in the area.

The old monastery buildings burned down in 1546, and the island has since had both manor houses and industry. Today there are no remains of either the monastery or the manor house on the island.

Flash floods and urban fires

In Ibsen's time, the Telemark watercourse was not regulated, and the water level in Hjellevannet varied greatly with the seasons. This led to large and devastating floods that submerged large parts of the city.

It wasn't just the floods that came at regular intervals. So did the town fires. Between 1652 and 1777, Skien burned six times, until the fire of 1886 destroyed the old Skien for good. This meant that the town where Henrik Ibsen grew up was gone for good.

Skien was quickly rebuilt

After the devastating fire in 1886, the new Skien was rebuilt and reorganized into a more modern city. Most of the houses in the old Skien were well insured, which meant that reconstruction started immediately and progressed rapidly throughout the 1890s. In order to break the series of countless fires that Skien had suffered throughout the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries, a wall ban was introduced.

Skien church was not rebuilt on Handelstorget, where the town's church had stood since the 13th century. The new church was built higher up in the town, not far from Lie cemetery, where Ibsen's parents are buried. Skien church was completed as early as 1894.

High and centrally located in the city, the church is a landmark in the area with its two 68-metre towers. The line of sight from the church down Kirkegaten, through Ibsenparken and Henrik Ibsensgate and down to the harbor is a monumental main axis in modern Skien.

Almost everything was lost

The fire of 1886 destroyed almost all the buildings in the town center. Only Prestegården at the top of Telemarksgata on the hill west of the city center and Snipetorpgata on the east side remain today.

Snipetorp is the only authentic urban environment from the 17th-18th centuries that exists in Skien today. If you want to walk the streets where Henrik Ibsen also walked, you must go there.

The Ibsen family moved to Snipetorpgata 27 in 1843, not long after Henrik had left the city to become an apprentice pharmacist in Grimstad. But Henrik visited on several occasions while he lived in Grimstad, and he stopped by when he was on his way to Kristiania in 1850.