Gjønavatnet and Kikedalen

Holdhus church

The old church at Holdhus is one of the oldest timbered churches left in the west of Norway. The new church at Eide, built in 1889, replaced the church location from the Middle Ages. As the small, tarred church lies today, in the hilly landscape at Holdhus, it was taken over by the Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments, who obtained title to the property in 1900 from Hans Holdhus.

Holmefjord

Even though we know of several hundred burial places from the Stone Age in Hordaland, we do not often hit on the Stone Age Man himself. But there are a few.

Hopslia

Some of the giant trees in Hopslia north of Holme Fjord are as much as thirty metres high. Elm and ash are the most common, basswood somewhat rarer. Relatively soft bedrock, good growing conditions and enough light, help them to thrive just here.

Yddal

Yddal is one of the biggest and finest pine forest areas in the county. The rich forest resources provided an important foundation for the settlement of Yddal. Up until about the 1950s, there were three farms here. Where the lumberjacks couldn't get to, the trees grew very big and can be over 300 years old.

Vinnesleira

Bays that are shallow far out into the sea, with fine sand and clay, are rare in Hordaland. Where they are found, the reason is usually that the edge of the glacier made smaller advances or stopovers when it calved back at the end of the last Ice Age. This is what happened at Vinnesleira.

Haganes

The gneiss landscape west and north of Bergen viewed in profile can remind us of a saw blade of the kind that has long, slanted sides that get broken off shorter transverse sides. It has taken several hundred million years to file this saw blade, an enduring interplay between various geological processes.

Høybøen

In connection with the planned developments in the oil sector at Vindenes around 1980, excavations were carried out under the auspices of Bergen Historical Museum. Exceptionally interesting traces of an old farm at Høybøen then came to light. These were the remnants of a farm where there had been two houses containing several rooms.

Løno

Small boat folk in Hordaland know where Løno is. As do many seabirds. With the big ocean at its back and a wide, weather beaten strait ahead of it, Løno is one of Hordaland’s most isolated and exposed recreational areas. The islands west of Sotra are some of the county’s most stable nesting localities for seabirds.

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.