Norway's Viking Ship arena and the cathedral ruins beneath a glass tent on the shores of Lake Mjøsa
Hamar is a small inland Norwegian city on the eastern shore of Lake Mjøsa — Norway's largest lake — about 130km north of Oslo in the Innlandet (Inland) region. It is best known for two things: the Vikingskipet (Viking Ship) ice arena, built for the 1994 Winter Olympics in the shape of an inverted Viking longship and still considered one of the most beautiful sports buildings in the world; and the Domkirkeodden (Cathedral Point) museum, where the ruins of a medieval bishop's cathedral sit beneath a dramatic modern glass and steel protective tent at the lake's edge. Hamar has a quiet, unpretent…
Hamar was one of Norway's four medieval bishopric cities, with a cathedral established around 1152 by the English cardinal Nicholas Breakspear (later Pope Adrian IV, the only English pope). The city was burned in 1567 during the Nordic Seven Years' War and never rebuilt at its original scale — the cathedral ruins represent what was once one of Norway's most important ecclesiastical centres. The modern city developed from the 19th century as a railway hub and agricultural market centre. The 1994 Winter Olympics, centred on Lillehammer but using Hamar's Vikingskipet for speed skating, brought i…