Golta- Long house

In the years between the wars a major registration of houses and house costumes, house construction methods, fireplaces and forms of housing clusters was started in West Norway – an ambitious mapping of everything that came under the name “Registration of Culture and Geography in West Norway”. One of the places of which material was gathered in 1938 was an old multi-room house at Golta; new and interesting material for the researchers from the Historical Museum, but well known within the local building tradition through several generations.

Hopland

The farmhouses at holding No. 15 at Hopland are built together to form a long, continuous building, with dwelling house, hayshed and cowshed built in one row. There have been many such joined structures in the coastal communities, but today there are few remaining. If we travel to the other side of the North Sea, to the Faeroes, Shetland and the Orkney Islands, we find corresponding features in the older building traditions. We find ourselves in a large North Atlantic cultural area.

Krossøy

Furthest north in the island community Rongevær, at the entrance to Fensfjorden, lies Krossøy. Belonging to the farm are the islands of Krossøy, Husøy, Kårøy, Lyngkjerringa, Søre Kjerringa, Rotøy and Kuhovet. All of them have been inhabited. On Krossøy itself today there are four holdings. The marine use environment here is one of the best preserved along the West Norwegian coast.

Boga

In the lightly undulating landscape at Boga there lies an old house with several rooms on a small rise. In fact it looks like three houses built into one another; a scullery, a living room and a store with a loft. From other sources we know that this house had covered passageways and sheds round all the walls in the 19th century; a compressed “long house” with inter-connections between all the rooms. This is a building style from the Middle Ages that we see traces of; a building corresponding to those we have seen remains of at Høybøen in Fjell and Lurekalven in Lindås. Bogatunet was restored in 2006.

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.

Øvre Tveiten

On an east-facing slope above Halllandsvatnet lies the farm hamlet of Øvre Tveiten, two kilometres north of Manger. The stone hayshed lies with its gable out into the sloping terrain, and the old dwelling house, a little long house, has solid stone walls on three sides. But inside the walls the hayshed and the living rooms are wooden buildings.

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.

Goltasundet

For generations the land-seine was the most important tool for catching herring and mackerel, and therefore a suitable casting bay was worth its weight in gold. Goltasundet (the Golta sound) on Golta was such a place. Here the herring often drifted in and fantastic casts might be made here.

Trellevik

Førland