Namsos

For most of its life Namsos ran on wood and water. The Namsen, the long river that gives the whole Namdalen region its name, tumbles 228 kilometres out of the mountains and reaches the sea right here — and for centuries loggers floated timber down its current to the sawmills waiting at the mouth. The most famous of them, the Spillum steam sawmill, opened across the water in the late 1800s and is now the Norwegian Sawmill Museum, where the old blades and planing machines still run for visitors. The same river made Namsos rich in a second way: its cold, clear pools hold some of the biggest Atlantic salmon in Norway, and from the 1830s wealthy British anglers — the "salmon lords" — travelled here each summer to fish, a tradition that still fills the riverbanks in June and July.

Then, in a few days of April 1940, almost all of it burned. Early in the Second World War, British and French troops landed at Namsos in a rushed attempt to push the newly-invaded German army back out of Trondheim, to the south. It was one of the first Allied ground operations of the war, and it failed: German bombers found the little wooden town packed with soldiers and supplies and set it ablaze, leaving the townspeople sheltering in the surrounding forests. When the fighting moved on, Namsos rebuilt itself from the ashes in brick and clean, modern lines — which is why a town this old looks so new.

Out of that reinvention came a surprising modern identity. For its size, Namsos has produced an unusual number of rock bands, and it now bills itself proudly as Norway's "Rock City", with a music centre and festivals to match. Climb the wooded town hill called Klompen for the classic view — the rebuilt town below, the Namsen sliding into the fjord, and forested ridges rolling to the horizon.