Various remains from the
Stone Age have been discovered in the Larvik area, for instance by
Torpevannet by
Helgeroa village.
Raet goes through all of Vestfold County before peaking out of the ocean in
Mølen. Ancient peoples have carried rocks from Raet and constructed vast numbers of burial mounds at Mølen. During the
Roman Iron Age, ancient peoples erected a stone monument resembling a ship at
Istrehågan, one of Norway's greatest remains from prehistoric times. About southeast of the town is
Skiringssal, an archaeological site where archaeologists first discovered burial mounds and an ancient Viking hall, and later uncovered the nearby remains of an ancient town,
Kaupang. This is now known as the oldest known merchant town in Norway. There was international trade from this area, over 1,200 years ago. and it was one of Scandinavia's earliest urban sites. Larvik (which historically used the
Danish spelling:
Laurvig) was an old coastal village. In 1671, the village received
kjøpstad (market town) status in 1671 when
Ulrik Fredrik Gyldenløvebought the Fritsø estate. He later became the first
Count of Laurvig. The count built a new residence in 1674, "Herregården", which can still be visited today. Then in 1821, it became part of the newly created
Jarslberg og Laurvigs amt (county). Larvik is also the site of the
Treschow estate, "Fritzøehus", which is currently owned by the heirs of
Mille-Marie Treschow, reportedly "Norway's richest woman". The Treschow estate was created in 1835 when Willum Frederik Treschow bought the county from the Danish crown, who in turn had bought the county from the local consortium "grevlingene", four local entrepreneurs who proved unable to manage the ownership financially (the consortium had bought the county from the Danish crown in 1817 originally, the crown taking over the county when the last of the counts had to sell it because of debt). Larvik, along with neighbouring cities of
Sandefjord and
Tønsberg, were the three dominant
whaling cities of Norway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The city of Larvik was a 19th-century spa community, home of Larvik Bath. The spa welcomed several members of government and also Russian oligarchs. The royal family,
King Haakon VII and
Queen Maud, vacationed at the bath in 1906. The spa also welcomed
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in 1909, who wrote some of his lasts poems in Larvik, and
Knut Hamsun in 1917. Hamsun wrote his novel
Growth of the Soil in Larvik, which later earned him the 1920
Nobel Prize for Literature. ==See also==