Ølve

Ølve has a special soil type. Here one finds an extra hard clay soil. This is especially noticed by those who work with excavating for building foundations and the like. Often it is necessary to use especially big digging machines and sometimes even dynamite in order to break up the compact masses. The reason for this is the growth of the glaciers toward the end of the Ice Age: The clay, that was first deposited in front of the glacier, came under great pressure when the glacier later grew and slid out over the clay.

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.

Ådlandsstova

The Ådland house is one of the biggest medieval houses still existing in West Norway. It is constructed from unusually large, hard fir wood, beautifully oval-cut. One story links the cottage to the Gildeskålbakken at Orninggård (Lower Ådland); thus indicating that the cottage has been the medieval banqueting hall. The building has been dated back to the 13-1400s by carbon dating.

Tveito

The village of Etne

Much of the sand and gravel that the town of Etne is built on was laid down at the end of the Ice Age and is evidence of melting glaciers and roaring meltwater rivers. The uncompacted material in the big terraces leave their unmistakeable mark on the wide elongated valleys.

Sæbøtunet

When you come into the well-tended farm steading at Sæbø just above Etne centre, you get the impression of a Sunnhordland farm from well before the time of the tractor; from the time of the horse and the scythe. The hamlet at Sæbø, one of the farms neighbouring to Gjerde, was taken over by Sunnhordland Folk Museum in 1938.

Støle church

The stone church at Støle may have been built around 1160 probably as a private chapel for the mighty Stødle clan. It is likely that it was Erling Skakke, the king’s representative and father of king Magnus Erlingsson, who built the church.

Støle

High above the sea and the beach flats, on one of the wide terraces shaped by the sea and the ice, lies the farm Støle (Stødle). The Old Norse name of Studla is derived from studill “support, shelf”. As far back as Viking times Støle has been a chieftain’s farm, a good farm on the plains formed by the moraine masses.

Smedholmen

Skånevik- moraine

In Skånevik there are marks left from the ice edge that advanced during the thousand-year cold spell (Younger Dryas) that marked the end of the Ice Age roughly 11 500 years ago. The glacier first proceeded out into Åkra Fjordand and around Vannes and thereafter sent an arm in toward Skånevik. Here, the glacier lay down an end moraine up against the mountainside.