Norwegian Canning Museum

Between the 1890s and the 1960s Stavanger lived on canned fish: at its height the town had around seventy canneries employing thousands, mostly women and children doing the threading, smoking and packing of brisling that was exported worldwide as Norwegian sardines. The museum occupies a cannery that stopped production in 1958, with the machinery, the smoking ovens, the soldering benches and the packing tables left in place. On demonstration days, several times a month and more often in summer, staff fire the smokehouse and visitors taste the results. A large collection of iddisar, the printed sardine tin labels that Stavanger children collected and traded, covers one section.

What you actually see

• The intact cannery - machinery and benches left as they were in 1958.
• The smokehouse - ovens fired on demonstration days with tasting.
• The label collection - iddisar, the tin labels collected by local children.
• The packing lines - the tables where women and children worked.

When to go

Year-round, with longer summer hours; demonstration days, when the smokehouse runs, are the best visits and are scheduled in advance, more frequently in the summer season. It pairs naturally with a walk through Gamle Stavanger.

Honest expectations

Without a demonstration day the museum is static and takes under an hour. The building is small and cramped. The smoking demonstrations are limited in number and worth checking before planning a visit around them.

Nearby

Gamle Stavanger surrounds the museum; the Petroleum Museum is across the harbour.