Tønsberg

Håkon V, the last king of Norway before the union years, died at Tunsberghus in 1319, and neither the fortress nor the town it guarded ever stood so high again. In 1503 Swedish soldiers and rebellious Vestfold peasants took the castle and burned it to the ground, and no one tried to rebuild it. A great fire in 1536 levelled most of the town itself. Tønsberg stayed the seat of its fief and a harbour of some standing, and in November 1589 James VI of Scotland stopped here on his way to his bride, Anne of Denmark, waiting in Oslo, and heard David Lindsay preach in the town church. Yet the town lay low for more than a century, and revived only in the 18th century, as one of the busiest shipping towns in Norway.