The name Gudvangen means “Gods place by the water” and in the Viking era it was an important market place and communication centre. During the “black plague” in the 12th century all inhabitants of Gudvangen died, and it took several hundred years before life returned to Gudvangen (according to the old church records).
In 1647 ad, a government minister called Hannibal Seierstedt started the Royal Mail route between Oslo and Bergen. The mail was brought from Oslo over the Filefjell to Lærdal and then on to Gudvangen, Voss and Bergen. Gudvangen then became a natural resting point for both postal workers and travelers. Due to the Nærøyfjord icing over in the extreme winter months, a primitive road to Bakka was constructed, where the mail was then brought over the fjord by boat. The mail the continued its journey by foot to a place called Styvi, where today you will find Norways smallest working post office. The post was then taken by boat to Lærdal and then further with horse and cart to Oslo.
The first hotel opened in Gudvangen was in 1805 ad. During the 17th century the cruise tourists started to arrive in Gudvangen and more hotels opened. Gudvangen was in this time also a popular subject for Norwegian artists and several of the most famous paintings in Norway are painted in this area. Some of these artists include JC Dahl and A Tideman. In the 1840s the first Norwegian steam boat “Constitutjonen” started to bring the mail between Gudvangen and Lærdal. From the 1880s until World War One, a large number of foreign tourists visited Gudvangen where they could experience the steep mountain that emerges from the fjord.
The increase in tourism was a direct result if the opening of the ferry route from Newcastle in England to Bergen. From Bergen ships transported tourists to Gudvangen in an early version of today’s “Norway in a nutshell” roundtrip, where the tourists were brought from Gudvangen up the steep road to Stalheim (stalheimskleiva) and back to Bergen.
In 1908 a total of 79 ships arrived in Gudvangen in addition to the regular ferry routes. This meant that almost 15 000 travellers were brought from Gudvangen to Bergen by horse and wagon in a single season. In the years leading up to the outbreak of World War One this number was double that amount. This amount of people created problems, such as smuggling and theft, rivalries between carriage drivers lead to the necessity of a police station opening up in 1910 to maintain law and order in the region. Famous faces in Gudvangen in these times included both the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
