Vardensteatret

When Tromsø decided films were too lucrative to leave to private enterprise, the city built its own cinema in 1915. The municipality’s gamble paid off: Verdensteatret opened in June 1916 to such fanfare that crowds spilled onto the street, unable to get in. Norway’s oldest continuously operating cinema still harbors its original orchestra pit beneath the floor, a relic from silent film days when live musicians accompanied every screening. Today, during the annual Silent Film Days, that tradition resurfaces with pianists and modern composers performing live in the same space.

The city hadn’t always run the show. A traveling exhibitor had been screening films in a smaller venue since 1909, but Tromsø’s council liked the revenue enough to claim a municipal monopoly in 1913 and build something grander. The gamble more than paid for itself: silent-era audiences packed the house for whatever a lone pianist or full orchestra could conjure up, from nocturnes for love scenes to Mendelssohn for the weddings on screen, while local newspapers reviewed the musicians as harshly as the films. The orchestra pit itself earned a reputation as the coldest spot in the building, a place where the Arctic seeped in from below even as the story on screen carried everyone somewhere warmer.