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The Tourists, the Landscape and the Fantasy Hotels
Tourist travel in western Norway experienced its great breakthrough with the regular scheduled steamship traffic.
Cultural Heritage and Cultural Landscapes
The development which culminated in the great west Norwegian clustered communities in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as we see at Havrå on Osterøy Island, actually first came into being in Viking times, with an incipient division of the farms into smaller units.
The Wooden Boat
Craftsmanship through two thousand years
The Fjord- a blue lung
The West Coast of Norway, with its deep fjords that carve far into the high mountains, is one of the most characteristic and - many would say - beautiful landscapes in Europe. It is not without reason that tourists come from around the world each year to see the fjords of Norway.
Last Ice Age
The continental glacier that covered Hordaland was like a great power that had decisive influence over our natural history. The glaciers which at the beginning of the last ice age (more than 100,000 years ago) grew out from Folgefonna, Hardangerjøkulen and other mountainous areas, chased animals and birds, and most likely also humans in front of their paths. Small animals, plants and trees were mercilessly run over and crushed to powder under the thick ice. Even the hard bedrock got torn up and scoured by the ice, which did not give up before it reached the outer edges of the continental shelf. First 14,500 years ago, the climate became mild enough that the outer coastal strip of Hordaland once again became ice-free. Plants, animals and people started to migrate in to a landscape that was golden, with flecks of grey moraine and sand between smoothly polished rock outcrops - as our present warm interglacial was born.
Petroleum riches off the coast of Hordaland
Already in the 1750s, Erik Pontioppidan fantasized about the possibility of petroleum in the North Sea, in "Forsøg til Norges naturlige Historie" (= Studies of Norway's Natural History) "The North Sea’s oiliness is, next to its saltiness, a remarkable feature. It can be expected that in the sea, as on land, there lie hidden some oil seepages or petroleum flows, naphtha, schist-oil and other bituminous and oily liquids”. More than 200 years were to pass before these predictions came true. In recent years, an unbelievable 120,000 cubic metres of oil and 70 million cubic metres of gas are pumped up from the Oseberg and Troll reservoirs every day. This fairy tale is being played out less than 80 kilometres from the coast of Hordaland, which is not further than that one could see the oil platforms from the coastal mountains on a clear day.
Glaciers
Two of Norway's - and mainland Europe's - largest glaciers, in addition to a number of smaller glaciers, lie in Hordaland. This eternal ice is easily accessible, and easy to be enchanted with. A National Day parade goes to the top of the Hardanger glacier, and Folgefonna glacier has lift assistance at the summer ski centre in Jondal.
Mining in Hordaland
Ølve has the oldest known mines in Hordaland. In 1642, privilege was granted by the king to build an iron works in Jernsmuget on the property of Lilledals Farm, and five years later a copper works on the same property. Operations were suspended in 1673. Mining resumed again in the municipality in the 1750s. Also this time, in the region of Ølve.