HAMMERFEST

For being one of the oldest towns in Norway, it might strike you as odd how modern Hammerfest looks. The town’s history includes several attempts by men and Mother Nature to remove it from the map, like after the hurricane that blew it down in 1856, and again after a devastating fire ravaged the town in 1890. But the worst thing was the Nazis in 1945, when the order came down that “no building be left standing”. Gjenreisningsmuseet, the Museum of Reconstruction, commemorates the cold, bleak years after the event.