Skjervøy, Norway

Skjervøy is known was a good area for fishing and many people gathered here during the fishing seasons. Most of them were fishermen; however there were also merchants and other tradesmen. There was a barter trade, with fish exchanged for various goods. Travellers came from Sweden and Finland. Kvens also came to trade goods.

Authorities that were to provide for law and order also came to Skjervøy. Skjervøy had a district court in 1586. Persons who had committed crimes could be arrested and be sentenced; they could be fined or imprisoned. Taxes were collected, sometimes in the form of fish catches. Around this time, a regular market was held that attracted people from as far away as Sweden.

The market was large and laid settlement for the Kvens.

Skjervøy developed from a small shoreline hamlet into more of an idyllic town with a church. The shipping route known as the Hamburger Route, which was a large cargo vessel that sailed between Vadsø and Hamburg to bring fish to Germany, called at Skjervøy. From 1896 Hurtigruten began to dock here. The main telegraph line was extended in 1869 and in 1890 the line was extended to Skjervøy.

Skjervøy was the first port of call for the polar exploration vessel ‘Fram’ after the three year North Pole expedition carried out by Fridtjof Nansen. The expedition was the first Fram voyage, when the ship drifted with the ice over the Polar Sea. Nansen and one of his closest colleagues, Lieutenant Johansen, left Fram frozen in the ice in March 1895 and travleled north on skis with dog sledge. The captain of Fram, Otto Sverdrup, sailed the ship out of ice, southward and arrived at Skjervøy on 20 August 1896, eight days after Nansen and Johansen were brought to Tromsø.

Some parts of Skjervøy escaped the scorched earth policy that the Nazis enacted when they retreated in 1944.