A wooden town climbing the hills above Norway's largest lake, where Olympic ski jumps crown the ridge and a Nobel novelist once wrote by the fire.
Lillehammer climbs a sunny hillside where the river Lågen slips into Mjøsa, Norway's largest lake. Granted market-town rights in 1827, it grew into a compact town of red-painted timber. In 1904 a local dentist's growing collection of old farm buildings became Maihaugen, one of northern Europe's largest open-air museums; in 1919 the novelist Sigrid Undset moved here and would win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1994 the little town hosted the Winter Olympics. Today its roughly 29,000 people (2025) live among wooden streets, museums and ski jumps on the ridge.
For two weeks in February 1994, this small town became the centre of the world. Lillehammer hosted the Winter Olympics — and at 61 degrees north it is still the most northerly city ever to hold any Olympics, and one of the smallest, with about 25,000 residents at the time. People remember it as one of the warmest, most joyful Games ever: torch-lit and snowy, with some two million spectators. The twin ski jumps on the ridge, Lysgårdsbakkene, held the opening and closing ceremonies; the timber-arched Håkons Hall staged the ice hockey and remains Norway's largest handball arena; and the Nordic countries' only artificial bobsled and luge track still curls through the forest at Hunderfossen.
Long before the Games, Lillehammer was a town of writers. In 1919 the novelist Sigrid Undset settled at Bjerkebæk, a home she pieced together from two old timber farmhouses on the hillside. There she finished Kristin Lavransdatter, a sweeping story set in medieval Norway that follows one strong-willed woman across her whole life; it won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. When Nazi Germany invaded in 1940 she fled to America, returning after the war to die here in 1949. Her house is a museum now, and the town's love of books runs so deep that UNESCO named Lillehammer a City of Literature in 2017.
The town's oldest story is carried on skis. In 1206, during a civil war, two warriors called Birkebeiners — birch-leggers, named for the birch bark they bound around their shins — carried a baby prince over the winter mountains to safety; he grew up to become one of Norway's greatest kings. Every March thousands of skiers re-run that escape in the Birkebeinerrennet, a 54-kilometre race that ends in Lillehammer, each carrying a pack for the rescued child. Down in the town, wander Storgata, the long wooden pedestrian street lined with 19th-century shops, then look out over Mjøsa, where the Skibladner — the world's oldest paddle steamer still in scheduled service, launched in 1856 — glides across the water on summer afternoons.
The making of Lillehammer
Lysgårdsbakkene ski jumps
The twin Olympic ski jumps on the ridge, where the 1994 opening and closing ceremonies were held — climb up for the view over town and lake.
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Maihaugen
One of northern Europe's largest open-air museums — some 200 old buildings, including a medieval wooden stave church, gathered on the hillside since 1904.
Sigrid Undset
The Nobel-winning novelist (Prize 1928) who wrote Kristin Lavransdatter at her Lillehammer home, Bjerkebæk — now a museum and the soul of this City of Literature.
Storgata
The long wooden pedestrian main street, lined with 19th-century timber shops — the charming heart of town.
Lake Mjøsa
Norway's largest lake at the town's foot, 117 km long — crossed in summer by the Skibladner, the world's oldest paddle steamer still in scheduled service (1856).
Birkebeinerrennet
A 54 km cross-country ski race, run since 1932, that re-lives the 1206 rescue of a baby prince — every skier carries a pack for the child.
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