Norwegian Church Arts Centre in Cardiff, Wales

The capital of Wales may seem like an unusual place to find anything labelled “Norwegian”, yet the Norwegian Church at Cardiff Bay is locally recognized as one of the city’s historic landmarks. The building is in fact a reminder of how Norway was once linked to South Wales. In the 1860s, the British coal industry was thriving, and Cardiff was one of the country’s major ports for exporting coal. Large amounts of the coal were transported on Norwegian ships, and this meant that many Norwegian sailors eventually ended up living in some of Wales’s port cities, including Cardiff. However, these ...