His family ran a fish trade and owned large parts of the town. L. Bergs Sønner is to this day a significant fishing company and one of Northern Norway’s oldest companies.
In 1882, after his apprenticeship in his father’s business in Svolvær, he travelled to Bergen to further his education in economics and business, as he was supposed to take over the family’s business.
But at the same time he took lessons in drawing with the painter and photographer G. J. Nicolaysen. From 1883 to 1885 he studied painting in Düsseldorf. He then returned to Lofoten where, with the help of his parents, he built a studio on Svinøya in Svolvær. The studio has been modernized and preserved.
In the late winter of 1886, Berg worked in Lofoten with the older painter Otto Sinding. Their paintings were often compared in newspaper reviews and Berg was accused of imitating Sinding. Thus, the friendship reportedly cooled.
In 1886 he moved to Berlin and made several study trips to Paris. In 1889 he had his first separate exhibition in Kristiania (Oslo) where a total of 146 paintings were exhibited.
Berg was only allowed to live for 30 years.
In 1893, cancer was diagnosed in his right leg.
The leg was amputated in Trondheim the same year.
Nevertheless, he traveled to Berlin where he died in winter.
In the studio in Svolvær it was approx.
600 paintings, sketches and studies by him.
Gunnar Berg is today considered Northern Norway’s greatest painter, and among the most important in Norway in his genre. His painting “From Svolvær Harbour” is considered one of the best he has made, in addition to what is considered by many to be his main work, The Battle of Trollfjord.
Through his work, Gunnar Berg was one of the first artists to put Lofoten on the map. Gunnar Berg is buried in the family’s burial chapel on Gunnarholmen in Svolvær. In 1994, a bust of him was erected there.
Many of his paintings as well as his main work “The Battle of the Trollfjord” are presented today in Gallery Gunnar Berg on Svinøya in Svolvær. His childhood home is next door to the gallery, and has today been renovated, and appears as it did when it was new in 1828.
