Home of the Golden Brew

This is the administration entrance of the old Ringnes Brewery - a dear name to most Norwegian beer lovers, at least to patriotic Oslo aficionados. Ringnes produced its first beer in 1877 and kept on brewing at this location until 2001, when production was moved to a large production plant just outside Oslo. In 2004 Carlsberg bought the majority of shares, and Ringnes was suddenly entirely owned by a foreign company - a catastrophy in many people's eyes. We still have the label and a brew, but things will never be the same.

Ringes sponsored the polar expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup and funded the construction of the exploration vessel Fram. During his exploration of the high Canadian Arctic in 1900, Sverdrup named three large islands after his sponsors (Axel Heiberg Island, Amund Ringnes Island, and Ellef Ringnes Island). The Geiberg Islands in the Russian Arctic were named after Axel Heiberg, and Ostrov Ringnes, the largest island of the Mona group in the Kara Sea, was named after the brewery.