Tønsberg

Tønsberg is a city in Norway, founded in the 9th century.

Other universes

Earth-199999

In Earth-199999, in the year 965, Tønsberg was the site of an attempted invasion of Earth led by Laufey and the Frost Giants, wielding the Casket of Ancient Winters. Odin, King of Asgard, led a defense force that drove the Frost Giants to their home realm of Jotunheim, where he defeated Laufey in combat. Tønsberg remained a site of significance for Odin: the Tesseract that he had kept in the Asgardian treasure room came to rest there for untold centuries, concealed in a temple by generations of Norse caretakers. In March 1942, Johann Schmidt, the leader of Hydra, came to Tønsberg, ambitious for mythic power. He found the temple containing the Tesseract and violently claimed it. The ensuing assault by Hydra forces effectively destroyed the city.

Following the destruction of Asgard in 2017, Asgardian refugees fled the planet for Earth aboard the Statesman spacecraft. With Odin having recently died, his son Thor was at last named the official king of the Asgardian people. The journey was a long one, and they were attacked several months later by Thanos's fleet, seeking the Tesseract. Despite the efforts of Thor, Hulk, Loki, Heimdall, and others on board, Thanos and his Black Order killed half of the passengers and allowed the rest to escape. The surviving refugees came to Earth, where they established the village of New Asgard over the ruins of Tønsberg, owing to its importance to Asgardian history. Thanos amassed all six Infinity Stones and used them to kill half of all living creatures in the universe, dealing a dire blow to New Asgard's already struggling population.

Nonetheless, they learned to adapt, and over the following five years came to terms with their new lot in life. Soon after the Snap, the Avengers tracked down Thanos in an attempt to reclaim the Stones and use them to reverse what he had done, but he had already destroyed them, precisely to prevent such an occurrence. In the moments leading up to the Snap, Thor had made an error in calculation and failed to kill Thanos—he achieved a hollow vengeance by decapitating Thanos once he and the Avengers located him. Thor became miserable at the thought that he had failed to protect trillions of people, and he retired to New Asgard, where he lived in a small house with Korg and Miek. Thor fell into a deep depression, drinking constantly while remaining largely a figurehead as King of Asgard. In 2023, the Avengers found a way to resurrect those destroyed in the Snap that Ant-Man referred to as the Time Heist: they would take the Infinity Stones from the past and use them to undo the Snap, returning them to their points in time as appropriate. Hulk and Rocket came to Thor's home to recruit him for this mission, and he reluctantly accepted after much cajoling. Though it was not without its own losses, the mission was a success, and Thanos's victims returned, ending the five-year period known as the Blip. With the weight of his failure lifted from his shoulders, Thor realized that he didn't want to be king, and instead appointed the noble Valkyrie to lead her people while he explored the universe with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

See also

• Tønsberg on Wikipedia