Skien is a city, municipality and county capital in Vestfold and
Telemark county. Skien was the administration center in the province
that went under the names Skiensysla, Bratsberg county, Bratsberg
county and Telemark county from the Middle Ages until 2020.
The ski borders in the north to Midt-Telemark and Kongsberg, in the
east to Siljan, in the south to Porsgrunn and Bamble, and in the
west to Drangedal and Nome. Historically, today's Skien was partly
considered to be Grenland and partly to Grenmar or Skiensfjorden,
but over time the whole area was seen as part of Grenland. Grenland
was from the 16th century in ecclesiastical and administrative units
called Nedre Telemark, and thus this also established itself as a
name for the area.
The city is one of Norway's oldest, and
the settlement grew around the year 1000. It is one of the few
medieval cities in Norway that was not founded by a king. Through
the lumber and sawmill industry, Skien became one of Norway's most
important commercial and cultural centers from the 16th century, and
retained its position as one of Norway's foremost cities until the
beginning of the 19th century. Today, ICT and other knowledge-based
activities are about to take over as the most important business
route in Skien.
Skien is known as the birthplace of the
playwright Henrik Ibsen, who often draws motifs from Skien in his
poetry, and the municipality spends a lot of resources on managing
and communicating the artist's life and works. The polar explorer
Hjalmar Johansen was also from Skien, and he co-founded the Sports
Association Odd. Norway's oldest existing football club, Odds
ballklubb, has its origins in this sports association. Skien has
three large theater buildings, the Ibsen House from the 1970s, the
Festival which was completed in 1891 and the Ibsen Theater on
Klosterøya which was completed in 2016.
The municipality and
the city are Norway's 11th largest, with 55,745 inhabitants as of 1
January 2016. The city of Skien is part of a contiguous urban area
in the municipalities of Skien, Porsgrunn and Bamble, and the town
of Porsgrunn / Skien is the seventh largest in the country with
93,255 inhabitants per. 1 January 2019 (of which in Skien 49 265, in
Porsgrunn 33 813 and in Bamble 10 177).