The soapstone occurs together with the rock type serpentine. In some places serpentine makes mystical colours and shapes in the terrain. Raudaberget and Raudskolten and similar place names have an association with the red colour in the ancient, weathered expanses of serpentine and soapstone. These bedrocks stick up like red-brown mounds in the terrain. The colour comes from the rust that is formed when the rock comes into contact with air and water.
Samnanger has the most serpentine and soapstone of anywhere in the whole county. The lens-shaped occurrences have probably arisen in or under the lowermost part of the oceanic crust that divided Scandinavia from Greenland 500 million years ago. When this sea finally closed, Norway collided with Greenland. During these processes the lenses got pressed up toward the surface and mixed with mica schists and greenstones. Serpentine and soapstone came to Samnanger 400 million years ago.
In fresh quarries the grindstone from Kvernes is green, with brownish veins of iron carbonate. Large quantities of stone were probably quarried during the period from the 1100s to the 1300s. New, big quarrying efforts were made again at the end of the 1800s, and by the Raunekleiv tunnel west of Ådland, also, soapstone is supposed to have been taken out for use in the Bergen Stock Exchange. We can see serpentine and some soapstone both along the new and old highway on this stretch of road. In Fagerbotnen one finds the biggest remaining deposit of soapstone. The road to Fagerbotnen was built around 1935 for stone quarrying, among other uses, for the Handwork and Industry Association's Headquarters and the Forum Movie Theater in Bergen. The soapstone in this area is darker green and is lacking the red-brown iron carbonate veins that otherwise are typical for soapstone from Samnanger.
