- Tvedestrand is a city with a soul, smiles Elisabeth Ellefsen as she looks out through the display window in Design Salon.

You won't take many steps in the city streets before you realize she's right.

Even among the charming small towns along the southern coast, Tvedestrand stands out. Just below Elisabeth's interior design shop, Hovedgata – yes, the whole center – plunges down to the fjord; the city becomes steep and full of stairs and alleys.

The absence of wide streets is due to the fact that Tvedestrand has never had a town fire. Here, all the streets are narrow and winding!

And the houses are as distinctive inside as they are outside.

The latter is due to the Tvedestrand residents' great ability to create special shops - both as part of the Tvedestrand Bokbyen and within completely different genres.

Style regardless of age

- Visitors appreciate that the streets here have independent shops, says Line Halvorsen in Lady Sting. In the store, she has sold timeless women's clothing for all ages for 30 years, all the time from the same premises.

During these years, she has gained very loyal customers. Some people are so happy in her clothing store that they resort to non-traditional methods to get the clothes they want:

- Some cottagers send e-mails and buy Christmas presents here, after seeing them on Instagram, she smiles.

The store manager realizes that Tvedestrand is known to most people as the Book City, but emphasizes that the southern village is much more.

- Bokbyen is fantastic. Some people can stand for hours between the shelves of antique shops. Then I promise that many spouses will be very happy to find shops like this.

Aesthetics, please!

Close to Line's clothing store are two other welcome respites: the summer-open clothing and ceramics store Linns Lille Lykke and the interior design and lifestyle store Designsalong, which is open all year round.

In the former, ceramist Linn Løland sells handmade dishes, bowls, candlesticks and cups - all turned as thin as possible in light clay - as well as beautiful textiles for sunny days on the beach or on the rock.

- Ever since I was a child, I have loved creating things, from idea to design, says Linn and states that the mugs with southern expressions such as "fin fu" and "maule" are the absolute best sellers.

- Many people tell me that they are their favorite cups, also because they are so thin and good to drink from. They sell so much that I can't make enough of them. So if you come here on the last summer weekend, I'm almost guaranteed to run out of them, she smiles.

Designsalong is also like a spa class for the sense of aesthetics. Here you can rest your eyes on beautiful, mouth-blown lamps from France, Danish design lanterns, cushions from New York, wood products from Birkeland, woolen products from wild sheep that graze in the archipelago, old balls of yarn - in short, the products owner Elisabeth Ellefsen herself has put her love into.

She herself is an interior designer by profession, with a studio in the back room. And the store wasn't really meant to be a permanent store at all.

- The idea was to have it as a pop-up in the summer of 2020. But then there were such nice premises, and it's so nice to run a shop in Tvedestrand. I wanted to get out of the home office anyway, she says.

Elisabeth notices that the experience of walking between the small shops in the narrow city streets is something people really appreciate.

- I get customers from afar. And when tourists from abroad arrive, they are completely overcome with excitement, she says.

Yarn for joy

If Elisabeth's interior shop is a relatively new addition to the cityscape, Turid Hegland Ellefsen's shop is at the very other end of the scale.

The yarn shop she took over from her father has been running for 62 years.

- Dad ran it for 31 years, so now I've beaten him, she smiles.

Within the white-painted wooden walls of Turids Garn og Manufaktur, she has filled every wall with threads, buttons, zips and many thousands of balls of yarn in all the colors of the rainbow.

- Many summer guests always stop by at the beginning of the summer to see that I am still here. And then they say "thank you for this year" when the summer season is over, she says.

From time to time, Turid also displays knitting on a chair outside the shop, along with a poster inviting anyone who wants to knit a length.

- Look here, it has turned into cloths like this, knitted on charity. I could have used them, but I haven't had the heart to. They give good memories, she says.

Treasure hunt on the shelves

Turid Hegland Ellefsen describes Tvedestrand as a city on three floors, with the shopping center Grisen Storsenter on the top and the flat part of the center on the second floor.

In that case, the majority of Bokbyen is located on the first floor. Down the slopes towards the harbor are the antique shops like letters in a word.

They are the shops most people associate with Tvedestrand, and pure treasure troves whether you want to be surprised or are looking for something very special.

- I have seen grown men with tears in their eyes because they have found the children's book they have been looking for for 45 years, Solveig Røvik tells Bokhuset and adds the obvious:

- We have more than 50,000 books on the shelves. So people like to spend some time here.

Helge Baardseth further down the street has the same experience. The old Vagabond editor fell for Tvedestrand when he moored here with an ocean liner ten years ago, took over Locus Antikvariat, and has stayed here ever since.

- It is not the city's largest antique shop. But in the summer, when I open the doors to the garden, it's definitely the most beautiful, he smiles.

For the city's largest antique shop, you only have to walk a few more meters. In Nynorsk Antikvariat, a total of 150,000 books with their spines exposed - some of them, admittedly, in another building.

Here you will find "everything" - and not just in Nynorsk.

- The oldest book here is this one, says Arne-Ivar Kjerland and picks a handwritten fair book out of one of the cupboards.

- It is from around 1460 and was written by three different monks on parchment. The Catholic priests had it in the saddlebag on their donkey when they went to churches that could not afford their own mass book, he says.

- The weirder the book is, the more fun it is, he states.

And if you don't agree, Tvedestrand has charming shops for you too.