History
Until 1979, it was believed that Skien was founded in the 14th century. However, the archaeological find of a carving of the Skien animal has established its founding to before 1000 A.D. The city was then a meeting place for inland farmers and sailing traders, and also as a shipping harbour for whetstones from Eidsborg (inland Telemark). The settlement can be traced back to the 11th century, and Gimsøy Abbey was founded in the 12th century. Skien was given formal commercial town rights by the Danish crown in 1358. Timber has historically been the most dominant export product from Skien, and the city was the Kingdom's leading port town for shipping timber from the 16th century onwards. The oldest remaining building is Gjerpen church (built in approximately 1150).
From the 16th century, the city came to be dominated by a group of families known as patricians. In an 1882 letter to Georg Brandes, Henrik Ibsen mentions the families Paus, Plesner, von der Lippe, Cappelen and Blom as the most prominent patrician families when he grew up there.
The current town layout was fixed after the last town fire in 1886. In 1964, the rural municipalities Solum and Gjerpen were merged with Skien town, forming the Skien municipality.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
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The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)