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![Gjuvsland (Svein Nord)](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/navn.jpg?itok=npdQFont)
![Geithidleren, Årsand, Kvinnherad](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/kvh_200-1.jpg?itok=oTokwPdx)
Årsand
Below a south facing, steep rock at Årsand, there is one of the strangest ancient relics in the whole of Hordaland. The jutting rock wall forms a shallow flagstone – Geithilderen. Parts of the rock wall are covered by a light lime crust and on the crust figures have been painted in golden and rusty red colours.
![The rock carvings at Bakko.](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/190/kvh_384-23.jpg?itok=SkUv1D2l)
Bakko
Everyone knows the famous painting by Tidemand & Gude “Brudeferden i Hardanger” (The Wedding Party in Hardanger) one of the great icons in the National Gallery. Some have, in a humorous lack of respect for this masterpiece linked the concept of “bride’s passage” to another pictorial presentation in Hardanger. This is found on the farm Bakko in Herand, carved in the rock by an unknown artist around 3,000 years ago.
![Cross-leaved heath (Akvarell: Miranda Bødtker)](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/auste_3.jpg?itok=LlH8ouMq)
![Gjønavatnet and Kikedalen](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/190/nvh_320_kikedalen_150.jpg?itok=mWd_BFbm)
![Hammarsland, Fusa](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/kvh_244-3.jpg?itok=yFuY5P-3)
![The rock carving ship on Samnøya, Fusa](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/awdawdawd.jpg?itok=c-c6gsY7)
![Osa and the Osa fjord](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/1/kvh_360xxx.jpg?itok=YQCQAW0y)
Osa
At the bottom of the Osa fjord there is a cultural landscape marked by great contrasts; the wide terraces and the river delta at the fjord contrast with the steep hillsides in the background, where Norddalen leads up to the mountain. There are two farms here. Osa and Sævartveit – the farm at the river mouth and the hollow by the sea.
![On the trail toward Kyrkjedøri, a half hour walk from Finse station, we find these small ridges](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/ulvik_12.jpg?itok=gpoawGzE)
Trail toward Kyrkjedøri
Roughly 550 million years ago, what is now Finse lay at the bottom of the sea - the remains of mud and clay that were deposited in this sea have ended up on the roofs of Norway. Also the thrust sheet from the continental collision has found its way to Finse, after a several hundred kilometre-long, trek through the mountains, that took several tens of millions of years to complete.
![Fantasy drawing of the animal life that reigned when the Bjorøy layer was deposited during the younger part of the Jurassic Period.](https://www.grind.no/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/bilder/sted/232/nv_35.jpg?itok=VWoic2L9)
Vatlestraumen
There are coal bits hidden in the sand under Vatlestraumen. These remains from a geological layer from the Jurassic Period were discovered when the undersea Bjorøy Tunnel was built in 1994. Oil- and gas reservoirs in the Troll Field in the sea west of Hordaland are from the same time. It is, nonetheless, quite surprising to find bedrock from dinosaur time inside of the outer islands of western Norway. On the Scandinavian mainland north of Denmark, there are only a very few places where one f inds rock from this time in earth history.