Bergensavisen had a predecessor in Arbeidervennen, founded by the Danish trade unionist Sophus Pihl in 1885.

When he died in 1888, a group of trade unionists and idealists continued his work.

They sold their newspaper to Bergens Arbeiderparti, the local affiliation of the Norwegian Labour Party in 1905.

When the social democrats had lost the power struggle, the victorious communists changed the journalism of their newspaper from social democracy to communism in 1922, erased the local news and published long political articles, chasing their readers away from the newspaper.

[4] Bergens Arbeiderblad was stopped by the Nazi authorities in February 1941 during the German occupation of Norway, chief editor Oscar Ihlebæk was sent to a German concentration camp, where he died just after the camp was liberated by the Allied forces in May 1945.