Hammerfest, town, on the barren island of Kvaløya, in Sørøy Sound, off the northwestern coast of Norway. Chartered in 1789, it was bombarded and destroyed by two English brigs in 1809. Between 1816 and 1852 Norway, Sweden, and Russia conducted surveys in the area to establish a meridian arc between Hammerfest and the Danube River at the Black Sea. A meridian stone column at Fuglenes (a section of the town) commemorates the completion of this work. In 1891 most of Hammerfest was destroyed by fire; Norway’s first municipal hydroelectric generating station was included in its reconstruction. From 1940 to 1944 the town was occupied by the Germans, who, upon their withdrawal, blew up the installations and forcibly evacuated the population. Hammerfest has since been rebuilt and is now the commercial centre of western Finnmark.
The town has a road connection with the National Highway and with Finland and air services to other parts of Norway. Tourism, fish-oil processing, and livestock raising are the town’s economic mainstays. Despite its northerly latitude, the harbour in Hammerfest is ice-free year-round because of the warming effect of the North Atlantic Current (terminal section of the Gulf Stream), which also causes midwinter temperatures to remain only slightly below freezing. Because the town is so far north, the sun shines continuously from May 17 to July 29, but there is no sunlight from November 21 to January 21. Pop. (2007) mun., 9,391.