Røros: the Mining Town You Won't Forget

Røros is not a recent discovery, yet it keeps slipping past the main circuits of Norwegian tourism. Built around a copper mine founded in 1644 and active for three hundred years, this inland Norwegian town — at 628 metres above sea level, one of the highest settlements in Scandinavia — was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1980. Its unpaved streets, lined with wooden houses painted in ochre, brick red and off-white, look like something out of a 19th-century Nordic novel.

The town that copper built

The historic centre of Røros, known as Bergstaden, can be toured on foot in a few hours but deserves at least one overnight stay. The baroque church of 1784 dominates the main square with a mass unexpected for such a remote little town — it was built by the mine owners as a symbol of power and prosperity. Smelthytta, the smelting museum, recounts in detail the history of copper extraction and the harsh life of miners who worked in polar temperatures.

The winter market

Every year in February, Røros hosts the Rørosmartnan, one of the oldest winter markets in Scandinavia: it dates to 1644 and draws thousands of visitors, horse-drawn sleighs, Sami craft products and temperatures that plunge to minus twenty-five degrees. Outside market week, the town goes back to being nearly deserted and the snow-covered lanes can be walked in absolute solitude. Local restaurants serve traditional inland Norwegian cuisine: reindeer, moose, hard cheeses produced at nearby farms.

Getting there and staying

Røros is connected to Oslo and Trondheim by the Rørosbanen railway, a scenic journey through the mountains that is worth the ticket for the landscape alone. From Trondheim it's about two and a half hours by train. The town has a handful of quality hotels and bed & breakfasts, with prices between 90 and 150 euros per night. The ideal months are January and February and July: in winter for the snow and the magic of the market, in summer for the mountain landscape and the endlessly long days that fade without ever going dark.