Events and festivals

Throughout the year the Medieval Cluster invites you to lectures, a festival and academic gatherings about the Middle Ages. Most events are free and everyone is welcome.

How you can take part

Three regular events you can join.

Medieval Week – a knowledge festival

Every autumn, Medieval Week fills Bergen with popular lectures, city walks, family activities, debates, exhibitions and concerts. The festival is created jointly by the research communities and institutions in the cluster. Most of it is free and everyone is welcome. Every other year an international, interdisciplinary conference is added to the programme.

Medieval Forum – knowledge and good company

The Medieval Forum is a lecture series and a pleasant meeting place for everyone interested in the Middle Ages – researchers, students and the public alike. There are five to six gatherings each semester, usually on a Monday or Tuesday at 6 pm in the wine cellar of Frille and Dyveke (Hollendergaten 7). Admission is free.

Dies Medievales

Dies Medievales is an interdisciplinary conference for medieval scholars, held every other year. Researchers from across the country meet to share new research across fields such as philology, archaeology, legal history, art history, literature, theology and musicology.

Medieval Forum 2026

In 2026 we are celebrating the 750th anniversary of Magnus Lagabøte's Town Law, and the city and the Town Law are the theme of this year's lecture series in the Medieval Forum. Welcome to Frille and Dyveke's wine cellar for new knowledge and good company!

Two years after the Law of the Realm, Magnus Lagabøte introduced new laws for the towns of Norway. This happened in 1276.

To mark the 750th anniversary of the Town Law, the Medieval Forum in 2026 will focus on several socio-cultural, religious, archaeological, linguistic and, not least, legal themes related to the Town Law and its use in Norway in the Middle Ages.

The Town Law regulated life in the towns, and gave both opportunities and constraints to life in Norwegian towns through the centuries. The lectures in the Medieval Forum will take a closer look at life in the Norwegian medieval towns.

Fragment fra bok fra middelalderen
Most of the known copies of the Town Law from 1276 concern Bergen. The image shows the beginning of the town law for Bergen in one of the finest legal manuscripts from the Norwegian Middle Ages, Codex Reenhielmianus, or the Lund Book (Lund, University Library, Mh 15, f. 24r). Photo: alvin-portal.org

Autumn 2026 programme

The lectures take place in Frille and Dyveke's wine cellar at Hollendergaten 7, and start at 6 pm. Everyone is welcome and admission is free.

21 September

  • The German shoemakers of medieval Bergen
    by Espen Kutschera, curator at the Bergen City Museum

19 October

  • New finds in Øvregaten
    by Ambjørg Reinsnos and Mona Karin Boge, archaeologists at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research

16 November

  • The Town Law and the Farmann Law of 1276
    by Gunnar Jansen, legal historian from Bergen

7 December

  • The Town Law and the Law of the Realm
    by Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, professor of legal history at the University of Oslo
Last updated: 08.09.2026