Photos

This photo completes a small series on village churches in Norway. It shows the church of Mundal, the village centre of Fjaerland, Norway.

Fjærland is the district surrounding Fjærlandsfjord, a branch of Sognefjord. Fjærland has 300 inhabitants, and is part of Sogndal municipality. The area has been settled since the Viking Age. The size of the population has varied over the years. Large scale emigration to America took place at the turn of the century. The centre in Fjærland is Mundal, about 3 km from the main road down the fjord. Mundal centre includes school, church and tourist information, as well as shops, hotels and other services. The church is from 1861, rebuilt in 1931. It is open to the public. In Mundal you will also find several bookshops, this being the eighth booktown in Europe and the first in Scandinavia since 1996.

Most people in Fjærland are engaged in farming. The farms are large and easy to run compared to most farms in Western Norway. Soil quality and climate are particularly good with respect to animal food production. All the valleys in Fjærland have mountain pastures, so called "støl" or "sæter". Few of them are in use today. They can be reached by path or cart road. The landscape in Fjærland has been shaped by glaciers through successive ice ages during the last 2,5 to 3 million years. Towering mountains and U-shaped valleys surround large delta areas which results from the accumulation of sediment supplied by the glacier rivers.

The glaciers Bøyabreen and Supphellebreen come down to the valley floor in Fjærland. These are branches of Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier on the European continent (487 km2). The ice falls of the glaciers move about 2 metres per day they are among the fastest in Norway. The lower Supphellebreen, at an elevation of 60 meters, is the lowest lying glacier in Southern Norway. Parts of Fjærland lie within Jostedalsbreen National Park. The national park covers 1.230 km2 and is characterized by great variation within short distances, from fjords and lowland, to mountains and glaciers.