University of BergenPublished: 08.11.2012 | Author: Nils Georg Brekke
High up above the fjord, at a height of 600m lie the two holdings at Kjeåsen. Today you can drive there by car, through a new tunnel that the power engineers in Sima have drilled. Until 1974 the only road went up the steep hillside, along iron bolted ladders across dizzying rocks – a road for the strong at heart.
There are still people at Kjeåsen, there is still farming being carried on with sheep in the shed and it is an experience getting up there to the simple, but well-kept yard – a close-up of the small subsistence economy. Kjeåsen was situated in an extremely isolated place with – in our view – an incredibly strenuous road to the farm, but here are rich resources right outside the door, and hunting, catching and fishing were the main activities for the people here. The last one to run the place was Helge Åsen. He is gone today, but there is a rich collection of hunting equipment left after him; a chapter in the story of living and surviving.
Lars Osa: “The last trip”, Sima valley, 1936 (Egil Korsnes, owner Hardanger Sparebank).
Folket på Kjeåsen
- Ekström, B. (1958) Folket på Kieåsen. Uddevalla, Bohusläns grafiska.
- Opedal, H.O. (1981) I skuggen av Hardangerjøkulen: Simadalen og Sysendalen: gardar og folkeminne. Bergen, Norsk bokreidingslag.
