Vassfjøro

At the foot of Vassfjøro one finds good roof tiles. As in the other slate quarries in Hordaland, this one also lies in the sole of the Caledonian thrust sheet, just over the phyllite and Precambrian basement. It was here that the compression was most intense, and here that the slate qualities are best developed.

But the slate in Ulvik lay high up in the mountains - far away from folk and markets. Nonetheless, the quarry was bought from the tenant farmers in Ulvik over a hundred years ago. In 1899 rights were transferred to Norwegian-American C. Børs-Isdahl. He had big plans, and it was said that he was a millionaire. The slate slabs were transported by running steel cables from the quarry, 1100 m a.s.l. and down to Osa. These operations didn't last very long. The work gave little economic reward, and often there was much snow and danger of avalanche. In 1914 Børs-Isdahl returned to America.