Grand Hotel Terminus, Amundsen Bar

Designed in a modern neoclassical style by the architects Fredrik Arnesen and Arthur Darre Kaarbø, Grand Hotel Terminus has long been a site of arrival and departure in Bergen. Located beside the railway station, it was inaugurated in April 1928 as a part of municipal efforts to rebuild following Bergen’s major fire of 1916, which claimed 400 buildings in the city centre.

The hotel’s Amundsen Bar, named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen, pays homage to the building’s early history. In June 1928, shortly after the hotel’s opening, Amundsen held his final press conference at Grand Hotel Terminus before departing on his ill-fated mission to rescue fellow explorer Umberto Nobile in the Arctic. He was never seen again. While the bar’s name reminds us of this moment of departure and loss, for nearly a century it has also been a key place of gathering and conviviality for Bergen locals and visitors alike.

For across, with, nearby, the Amundsen bar becomes the venue for Monica Ursina Jäger’s The Unseen — Fjord Conversations, a project developed alongside climate researchers in Norway’s fjords, which investigates these famous natural sites as layered and contested spaces. This commission once again brings to life the bar’s history as a point of departure, meeting, and exchange.