Hjølmo

In the steep hillside in Hjølmodalen, a small side valley from Øvre Eidfjord (Upper Eidfjord), which has been a key entrance to the Hardanger Plateau, the hamlet of old farmhouses still lie clustered together. The yard is empty today, some of the houses are used in the summer, but the grass grows round all the corners.

Kjeåsen

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.

Måbø

Måbø is the uppermost farm in Måbødalen. This narrow and steep mountain valley has been one of the routes from the fjord communities up to the mountain plateau from times immemorial. We are not certain of the meaning of the name Måbø. Perhaps it has its origin in an Old Norse male name Mávi, from the name for seagull, már. The last syllable “bø” means farm. Today Måbø gives us a compact close-up of the subsistence economy: the small farm with the clearance piles, stone walls and a lane that guided the animals into the yard, at the foot of the great mountain expanse.

Nottveit

In one of the frame-built haysheds at Nottveit, at holding No. 3, we discover that several of the staves have a medieval look, with large dimensions and carefully rounded edges. According to tradition, it was the farms Nottveit and Mostraumen that supplied the timber for the stave church at Mo, and it is not unlikely that these farms received the old timber in return when the new church was erected there in 1593.

Otterstad

Tthe Otterstad farms lie in the innermost part of Mofjorden, on the northwest side of the river. The row of stave-built boatsheds that belong to the farm were probably constructed a little after the middle of the 1800s. Both here and on the Mo side, the boatsheds were important storage places at the seashore; wood and other farm products intended for the town; corn and merchandise in return.

Gullbrå

From written sources we know that the farm Gullbrå was in use early in the 1600s. The Apostolic church in Bergen owned land here that it rented out, but even early in the 1600s some of the land was in private ownership. Eksingedalen then belonged to Modalen parish, which was under Hamre parish. In 1723 the Apostolic church still had properties here, and Ivar and Lars were farmers.

Årskog

Årskog farm is situated in a typical coastal landscape in a gentle terrain that slopes down from the outlying heaths down towards the fjord. The farm steading exists as it was in the 1800s. In 1980 the two brothers, Lars and Olai Årskog donated the farm with all its contents of tools and interior decoration, for museum purposes.

Havrå

In the sunny, steep fjord landscape along Sørfjorden on the east side of Osterøy is the farm Havrå. The small “hamlet” is one of the few undisturbed farming communities that gives us the impression of the large communal yards in West Norway in the 1700s, with houses built close together and strips of arable land.

Krækkjavassdraget

Few other animal species on Hardangervidda have been as much the focus of scientific research as the spotted trout. The spotted trout is considered to be a genetic variant of brown trout. It lives in parts of the Krækkjav water system. Otherwise, on a world scale, this species is only found in a small area in Kaukasus, and possibly also in a lake in Rondane.

Hellandsfossen