Alvøen

Alvøen is one of the oldest industrial places in Norway. As early as the 1620s a gunpowder mill was built here. The place itself was well situated for industrial activity, lying only 100 m from the waterfall, which provided power for the mill, and a good harbour wherefrom the products were shipped. The success of the gun-powder mill varied in the 1600s and 1700s, but what made Alvøen best known was its paper production.

Damsgård

As a fairytale castle Damsgård Hovedgård lies on the slope rising up from the Puddefjord. The old connection between the farm and the sea, as we see it on Dreier’s prospectus from 1810, has been broken up by roads and encroachments in the building mass. But the main building itself is a central monument in Norwegian architecture from the 1700s – one of the finest representatives for the rococo period, with a magnificent and rich décor both in its interior and exterior.

Kalandsvatnet and Klokkarvatnet

Stend

Garden Stend høyrde i mellomalderen til Nonneseter kloster. Etter reformasjonen var han i eiga til Vincents Lunge fram til 1680. Då overtok generaltollforvaltar Hans Christophersøn Hiorth eigedommen. Hiorth vart adla i 1682, og Stend fekk status som adeleg setegard. Truleg fekk den staselege hovudbygningen si form i Hiorths embetstid.

Store Milde

Holmen

HOLMEN AND THE KØLLE FAMILY Holmen lies by the fjord, innermost in Ulvikpollen. Originally this was a small smallholding or coast dweller’s place belonging to the farm Håheim. Major Johan Henrik Palludan obtained leasehold for a part of Holmen in 1773, and erected a grand house, as he was the head of Nordre Hardangerske kompani. In 1806 Mrs Palludin sold Holmen to the somewhat eccentric theologian Kristian Kølle, and thus the Kølle family came to Ulvik. Today the Kølle house in Holmen is gone, today it is the residence of the principal of the State horticultural school that occupies the ground – a villa in the dragon style from the turn of the previous century.

Jomfrunuten

Freezing and thawing are processes that influence plant cover, move enormous blocks, stretche long mounds of earth, break open bedrock and create patterns in stone and earth.

Hårbrekke

Skårsvatnet

In September, 1901, a load of golden orfe fish was transported from Preussen to Bergen for stocking of Nygårdspark. One of the originators of the project was the well known doctor Klaus Hanssen. Thirteen years later, Hansen was called to help. Would he please come to Øystese to assist the district doctor Peter Munch Søergaard in his attempt to combat tuberculosis in the village? Hanssen came - and had in his suitcase living "goldfish" from Nygårdsparken.

Tangarås

From his loft window on the doctor’s farm at Tangarås the young Hans Ernst Kinck had a view of the fjord and the Mauranger mountains. The fjord settlements in West Norway made a strong impression on the young boy when his family moved from Setesdal, from “the stifling mystique of the ballad”, to Strandebarm in 1876. The new district doctor bought the old captain’s farm at Tangarås, which had for some time been a military head farm after Håbrekke further into the settlement.