History
Skjenkestuen and Gnu: one venue, two eras
On Nedre Strandgate, a couple of minutes' walk from the Vågen waterfront in Stavanger, there's a venue that has been a bar longer than most of its guests have had a permanent address. Today it's called Gnu Bar. Before that, it was Skjenkestuen.
The story between the two names isn't dramatic. It's more like a lot of nightlife stories in Stavanger city centre: a place appears, becomes a regular haunt, holds on for a while, and goes quiet. Then a new place moves in and uses the room. The venue has been a continuously operating bar since the 1980s.
Skjenkestuen (1986–2006)
Skjenkestuen opened in 1986 and quickly became one of the more distinctive brown pubs in Stavanger. It attracted a crowd slightly older than the city centre average, and became a regular spot for people who came to talk, listen to music and stay put.
Stavanger Aftenblad described it as a place for jazz, conversation and people past the age of restlessness — a venue where the evenings weren't necessarily about volume or tempo. That kind of pub had plenty of time in the '80s and '90s. Skjenkestuen stayed for nearly two decades.
Then came the smoking ban.
When it was introduced in 2004, it hit the small, smoke-heavy pubs particularly hard — the ones that had built much of their atmosphere around exactly that. For Skjenkestuen, the change was difficult to absorb.
Two years later, in 2006, the place closed after 19 years. There was no drama around the ending. Just a Stavanger bar that no longer quite fit the times.
A venue that didn't stay empty
After closing, the Nedre Strandgate premises didn't stand without a liquor licence for long. Bars in Stavanger rarely move far; they move into each other.
Gnu opened in the old Skjenkestuen space shortly after, and took over the room with much of the same formula: bar, music, regulars and a low threshold.
The transition wasn't a new beginning so much as a continuation with different people behind the counter. It's a common mechanism in the city's nightlife. The names change, but the rooms carry on.
Gnu Bar
From the start, Gnu had a clearer profile towards live music and bar culture than Skjenkestuen had in its final years. The crowd got younger, the tempo a bit higher, but the basic shape remained the same: an independent bar with DJs, quiz nights, beer and familiar faces.
The place took its name from the gnu head mounted above the bar. The head had been there since the beginning — a hunting trophy from Africa, shot by a Norwegian hunter. For many years it was just a head on a wall. Like many other pub animals.
Today Gnu has live concerts, quiz nights, DJ sets, sausage Fridays and a view over Vågen harbour that still surprises people who only came in for a beer.
Rauå (2025)
In 2025, Gnu got the rest of the animal. The rear end of the gnu was handed over to the bar by the hunter's family, and for the first time since the animal was shot, the trophy was whole again.
What had started as a curiosity in the decor became a concrete, complete animal in the room. It was named Gnu-Rauå, and was mounted as a permanent fixture. The event itself was simple: an object that had existed in two parts was reunited.
The unusual part was that it happened in a bar.
Same room, different time
Taken together, the connection between Skjenkestuen and Gnu is primarily geographical. Both are brown pubs. Both have had regulars. Both have been places where people stay. Both have existed in the same room on Nedre Strandgate.
Skjenkestuen was an '80s and '90s pub that disappeared when smoke and quiet pub evenings became harder to sustain. Gnu is a bar for the 2000s and 2010s, with DJ nights, live concerts and a more ironic relationship with itself.
But the room is the same.
Stavanger's nightlife has always had this kind of continuity: venues disappear, but the premises carry on. New names settle on top of old memories.
Gnu is therefore not just a bar. It's also the latest chapter in a longer use of the same room as a social meeting place in Stavanger city centre.
From Skjenkestuen to Gnu, it's less a break than a generational shift.
A venue with a memory
Today there are few traces left of Skjenkestuen as a name. But the history still sits in the walls — in the sense that the bar function never really ceased.
A place on Nedre Strandgate where people sat and talked in 1988 is still a place where people sit and talk. It's not an unusual story. It's typical of how cities work: rooms outlast concepts.
On Nedre Strandgate, that room has had two names over the past forty years. First Skjenkestuen. Then Gnu.