Kristiansten Fortress: The Star That Saved Trondheim

After fire destroyed most of Trondheim in 1681, the Danish-Norwegian king Christian V ordered the city rebuilt to a new plan and crowned by a modern fortification on the hill east of the river. Designed by the Luxembourgish military engineer Johan Caspar von Cicignon, Kristiansten Fortress took shape between 1682 and 1684 as a compact star fort whose guns commanded every approach to the city.

Its defining moment came in 1718. During the Great Northern War, a Swedish army under General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt marched on Trondheim through the mountains. The fortress's guns and the determination of its small garrison forced the Swedes to abandon the siege. Their winter retreat across the Tydal mountains turned into a catastrophe — roughly 3,000 Swedish soldiers froze to death, an event still commemorated on both sides of the border. Without Kristiansten, Trøndelag might well have ended up as part of Sweden.

The fortress lost its strategic value in the 19th century and was decommissioned in 1816, but it returned briefly to grim use during the Second World War, when occupying forces executed members of the Norwegian resistance against its walls. A simple memorial stands there today. From the ramparts you get the best free view in Trondheim: the cathedral, the wharves of Bakklandet, and the curve of the Nidelva framing the old city.