The steep sloping landscape on Håvra
The steep sloping landscape on Håvra, the dug fields, the piles of cleared stones, the ash poles and the retaining walls tell a rich saga of the cultural landscape (Svein Nord).
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 tool technology which has given form to this landscape, the sickle, the hoe and the wooden plough go just as far back – yes, in fact the sickle and the scythe are tools which have been maintaining and modelling the landscape from the Iron Age.
A stone image at Bakko, Herand in Jondal. (Svein Nord).
The grave mounds lie in the middle of the wide enclosed fields in the agricultural property of Etne. When the tractor took over the landscape, it was a 3,000 year old way of farming which was being changed. (Helge Sunde).
Catherine Kølles finely drawn landscape painting from Samland in Herand shows us the classical agricultural land from the 19th century (Catharine H. Kølle: Samlande i Hardanger. Photo: Helge Sunde, owner University Museum in Bergen).
The cultural landscape is about producing food, about living and surviving. Binding up the corn at Vallavik in Ullvik (Anders P. Wallevik, Owner: Hardanger Folk museum).
On the heath landscape at Golta in Sund we look out towards the ocean. Seafaring, fishing and shipping make up a fascinating saga about life on the west coast of Norway. The long stone walls between the enclosed land and rough grazing beyond tell of a painstaking exploitation of resources. Image from 1992. (Svein Nord).