Manuscript for tour to Kjøsnesfjorden in English

Published 07/28/2025

Manuscript for the tour of Kjøsnesfjorden

A list of the things you will see or hear about on the guided boat tour with Jølster Boat Tours

1. Facts about Jølstravatnet (Lake Jølster)
   1. Jølstravatnet is approximately 22 km long and about 1.75 km at its widest.
   2. The lake is situated approximately 207 meters above sea level (masl) and spans an area of approximately 39.25 km².
   3. The greatest depth is approximately 233 meters, and the average depth is about 89m.
   4. The volume of Jølstravatnet is approximately 2.89km³, which corresponds to about 1,111 Cheops pyramids, 1,926 Burj Khalifa, 2,752 Empire State Buildings, or 52,545 of The White House.
   5. There are 12 smaller or larger villages around Jølstravatnet, with several farms in each village.
   6. Approximately 2,000 people live near Jølstravatnet.
   7. Jølstravatnet is one of Norway's most famous and sought-after lake fishing waters, perhaps Europe's best fishing water, and especially famous for its large and tasty Jølstra trout. The trout is closely related to salmon but is more exclusive and completely wild.
   8. The average size of the trout in the water is 333 grams (three trout per kilo), which is a very good average and a good size for food.
   9. Jølstra trout has been an important food resource and trade commodity for centuries.
   10. Jølstravatnet has its own fish reception for commercial fishing, packing, and distribution of Jølstra trout.
   11. Why does the fish get so big?
       1. Rich nutrient supply: Plankton and small fish provide good growing conditions.
       2. Deep lake: Provides stable temperatures and good overwintering conditions.
       3. Good water quality: Clear lake with low pollution.
       4. Long growing season: Relatively mild climate for being in the inner part of Vestland (Western Norway).
   12. Between 12–18 tons of Jølstra trout are fished annually.
   13. A fishing license is required to fish in Jølstravatnet – usually via local landowner associations or services like www.inatur.no.
   14. Records and big fish
       1. With rod:
          1. The largest trout caught with a rod weighed 12.1 kg. It was caught by Sverre Amundsen, innermost in Kjøsnesfjorden, in April 1996 using a lure. This record stood unchallenged for several decades and is considered the largest documented one caught with a rod.
       2. With net:
          1. A very large trout of 15.5 kg was caught with a net in October 1973 by Anders Ripe. This is the largest registered trout in the lake, regardless of the type of gear.
   15. Jølster Aurefest (Jølster Trout Festival)
       1. An annual fishing competition that has been held since 2014, inspired by a large-scale fishing competition back in 1958, where you could win a car, a moped, and furniture.
       2. Usually held in June and gathering up to 2,000 participants, which makes it the largest fishing competition in Norway.
   16. Communication
       1. Jølstravatnet had the steamboat Skjold for passenger traffic on the water from 1890 to 1914. It was built of steel and was fired with alder wood. The boat originally operated in Bergen and was moved up from Førde with 35 horses and a workforce of 70 men. It was used as a church boat, passenger boat and trading boat. From 1914, it was used in Kjøsnesfjorden until 1937, when the road to Lunde was completed.
   17. Hotel
       1. The tourist hotel at Skei was built in 1889 with 30 beds. It was severely damaged in a fire in 1943. Then rebuilt in a larger edition and has since been modernized and expanded several times. The hotel was perfectly located at a junction in Sogn og Fjordane. Today, the hotel is named Grand Hotel Jølster, under the Uniqe Hotels brand (De Unike). They offer accommodation, lunch, dinner, and experiences.
2. Grovabreen (Grova Glacier) and Jostedalsbreen (Jostedal Glacier)
   1. The two glaciers have been separated since the last ice age (approx. 10,000 years ago).
   2. Grovabreen is the 21st largest glacier in Norway (excluding Svalbard), and is with its 20km² much smaller than Jostedalsbreen. The highest point is at 1,633 meters.
   3. Jostedalsbreen is the largest glacier on the European mainland with its over 480km². The highest point of the glacier is Høgste Brekulen with 1,952 m above sea level. The highest mountain near the glacier is Lodalskåpa with 2,083 meters.
   4. At its thickest point, Jostedalsbreen is approximately. 600 meters thick. It is approximately 60 km long at its longest.
   5. The glacier has varied greatly in size over the last 10,000 years. From being almost completely gone, to growing a lot during the "Little Ice Age" in the 1700s, where it grew a lot and pressed past farms in Nordfjord and Jostedalen. You can see traces of the glacier in moraine ridges and end moraines.
   6. In the past, you had to walk over the mountain and the glacier to get from Jølster to Fjærland. In 1986, the tunnel from Lundebotn came, which connected Fjærland to Jølster without the need for hazardous glacier crossings. Former US Vice President Walter Mondale, with family from Mundal in Fjærland, opened the tunnel.
   7. Jostedalsbreen National Park was established in 1991 and covers an area of 1,310km².
3. Well-known people associated with Jostedalsbreen
   1. William Cecil Slingsby was a British mountaineer and was called the father of mountaineering. He had around 50 first ascents during his 21 visits to Norway between 1872 and 1921.
   2. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, also known as Wilhelm II, was a frequent guest in Norway, especially in Fjærland, where he admired Jostedalsbreen. He traveled on summer visits to Norway almost annually before World War I, often with his yacht.
      1. It is known that there were plans to kill the emperor during a visit to Fjærland, but the emperor had to cancel the trip to Supphellebreen, and the assassination was averted.
      2. The emperor is said to have been in Balestrand, where Fjærlandsfjorden starts in Sognefjorden, when on July 25, 1914, he received a telegram about the start of the First World War, whereupon he traveled home to Kiel.
      3. He was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, and reigned from 1888 to 1918.
4. Facts about Kjøsnesfjorden (Kjøsnes Fjord)
   1. Approximately 9 km long, so that Jølstravatnet and Kjøsnesfjorden together are approximately 30 km.
   2. The bridge that separates the two waters was built in 1972. The concrete elements were made elsewhere, and one element fell off the barge during transport and lies at the bottom of the water. The bridge connected Kjøsnes and Dvergsdal/Sunde, so that you could drive around the entire Jølstravatnet (about 50 km).
   3. Kjøsnesfjorden is 149m deep and has steep mountainsides down to the water. They have been polished smooth by the glaciers and are mainly covered with deciduous trees in the less steep areas.
   4. The water has a rich birdlife with small birds, oystercatchers, gulls, herons and Norway's largest bird; the sea eagle, where the females are the largest and can have a wingspan of up to 270 cm and weigh 5-7 kg.
   5. The steep mountains around Kjøsnesfjorden have several beautiful peaks, the highest being Søgnesandsnipa with its 1,548 meters.
   6. There have been several fatal landslides on the national highway, including deaths in 1999 and an accident where a man lost both his legs in 2003. In addition, at least 33 goats were killed when a night bus came across goats lying in the middle of the road near one of the tunnels in 2011.
5. The road between Kjøsnes and Lunde
   1. The road from Kjøsnes to Lunde was started in 1932 and was completed in 1938, under the leadership of Per A. Sægrov and his workforce. The landowners participated in the project with either money or voluntary work, and the total cost of the project back then was NOK70.000,-.
   2. The road was not significantly improved until the start of the 1980s in connection with the construction of a tunnel from Lunde to Fjærland. First two new tunnels and three avalanche shelters. Later came two new environmental tunnels and finally the Støylsnestunnelen, which was opened in 2010.
   3. The Kjøsnestunnelen came in 2022 and was connected together with the Støylsnestunnelen, so the total length was 8.6km. An important measure for avalanche protection, after years of dangerous situations and particularly many landslides and accidents in 2004.
   4. The largest stones we can see on the old road today fell down around 2020. They took with them crash barriers and crushed the road surface before they stopped or slid further out into the water. Some of the stones are as large as cars and can be assumed to weigh both 10 and 20 tons.
   5. In Vikane, you can still see the summer farms, where the goats have been milked for several hundred years. They also had their own dairy where they made cheese. This building has since been moved to Kjøsnes, where there are plans to resume the tradition.
6. Vikane, Lunde, Ripe and Sygnesand
   1. Documented settlements since the 1500s in Lunde.
   2. The oldest house in Lunde was built in 1869 from an old house that was dismantled in Vassenden. Timber and wood products were very expensive. Therefore, stone was used a lot on houses, barns, and outbuildings.
   3. Tourist station and transport on Jostedalsbreen since the 1890s.
   4. Rowboats were used until 1913 for transportation and travel in and out of Kjøsnesfjorden. Then they invested in a 30-foot steel boat with a paraffin engine.
   5. After Jølstravatnet got a better road connection between east and west, the Skjold was bought by the landowners in Kjøsnesfjorden and put to use there.
   6. Historically, there have been hundreds of goats, sheep, and cows in the steep terrain along Kjøsnesfjorden. Today, there are significantly fewer animals to see, about a couple of hundred, and almost exclusively goats.
   7. In Vikane, a large landslide went down the mountain around 1900 and took with it twelve cows into the water. The old people in the village had a superstition and thought this could have happened because they had moved the cows on July 2nd that year (Syftesok), and that could mean bad luck.
   8. They had their own dairy by the beach at Lunde.
   9. As on so many other farms along water and rivers, there were several mill houses in Kjøsnesfjorden. Here, they milled their own grain for food and beer. Some of these mill houses still stand.
   10. There was an organized itinerant school on the farms in the area until a small school building was built in Lunde.
   11. Until the 1950s, they mowed grass and dry hay for the animals all the way up the mountainside and far out into the fjord. They used outbuildings in the mountains for summer grazing, milking, and cheese making.
   12. The glacier on Tverrfjellet, innermost in Kjøsnesfjorden, is called Lundebreen and is an arm of Jostedalsbreen.
   13. Ice from Lundebreen was taken out from Lundebotn and transported to Skei for use in cooling cellars to keep fish and meat chilled.
   14. Lundeskaret is DNT's steepest marked hiking trail in Norway (DNT = The Norwegian Trekking Association).
   15. In Søgnedansdalen, there is a cool waterfall called Pissaren. A waterfall where the spray stands straight out.
   16. At Søgnesand, there is a Viking grave which is a cultural monument. In connection with the plowing of fields in the 1920s, Viking swords were found, which today are in museums in Bergen.
7. Kjøsnes, Sægrov, Sunde and the artist Astrup
   1. Nikolai Johannes Astrup (1880–1928) was a Norwegian painter, draftsman, and graphic artist who lived on a small farm along Jølstravatnet. He painted several of his pictures from Sunde in Kjøsnesfjorden. He is one of the most distinctive visual artists in Norwegian art history and was, alongside Edvard Munch, a significant innovator of graphics in Norway.
   2. Astrup is known for his landscape and nature pictures from Jølster in Vestland. He found most of his motifs in the home district of Jølster, and he used the same motif several times in different variations. He portrayed nature and folk life with exuberance and imagination. Astrup was skilled at portraying the nuances in natural colors, especially the green colors that characterize spring and summer in the fertile, humid climate of Vestlandet. He was particularly concerned with recreating feelings and moods. The inner life was important to Astrup, who actively used his childhood drawings and memories in his art. Many of his paintings are characterized by both the symbolic and by a childlike simplicity.
   3. His nature pictures have realistic, naturalist, and abstract features. With his nature immersion, Astrup stood partly outside the art development in his time and outside the trend-setting environments. He described himself as the most local and earthbound painter in the country. Woodcut was little used in Norway when Astrup took up the technique; it was mostly only Edvard Munch who had used the technique with good results.
   4. Astrup was well oriented about what was happening in European art and was influenced by contemporary art, including through many study tours abroad.
   5. His wife, Engel Astrup, was a textile artist. Astrup and his family lived in difficult conditions on a small farm by Jølstravatnet. He was plagued by asthma throughout his life, and he died of pneumonia at the age of 47. The farm, Astruptunet, is now part of the Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, which also owns some of Astrup's works. Sparebankstiftelsen DNB bought Jon Christian Brynhildsen's large Astrup collection, which has a permanent exhibition space at KODE 4 in Bergen.
   6. At Kjøsnes there is a large large mountain with a crack in the middle. This is Husefjellet and Kleivafjellet. This was the inspiration for Astrup when he painted "Kollen". In the painting "Vårdag ved Kjøsnesfjorden", one can see the mighty Grovanipa at the top in the middle of the painting. These motifs can be easily recognized when you have passed the bridge on the way into the fjord.
   7. Before Astrup became known for his paintings, he sat at Sunde and painted, among other things, "Kollen". He gave a copy of the painting to the farm where he resided when painting, but they were not hung on the wall at the time. The canvases were used by kids on the farm as sleds on the snow down towards the slopes. Rarely have children in Jølster had more expensive sleds to play on!
   8. Due to the distances along Kjøsnesfjorden, there was a separate dairy also at Sunde. It was difficult to keep the milk cool in the summer heat, and you could not make cheese and butter out of everything. Some had to be delivered anyway as milk so that it could be distributed further to the local market.
   9. People have lived in Sægrov since the 1500s-1600s. Goats up to 1982, since that time there has grown up a part with berch, willow, and alder. In addition there were sheep, pigs, cows and horses on the farm. During World War II, one of the farmers, Sægrov, hid a radio in a wall in the mountain. The Gestapo also combed through Sægrov after the resistance people. They have watermills from the 1800s, and the first silo that was made in Jølster still stands. It is from the 1870s and dry stone dry-stone-walled in local stone from the fields. Since then, it has been plastered, and the idea of a silo came from a man who had gone to farming school in a bigger place with newer farming technology. In the 1980s, Grovabreen calved big icebits, which made a floodwave in Vidunderdalsvatnet. This led to large water masses flowing downward the river at Sægrov and took with it stone and gravel and otherwise down the river where it overflowed the fields. Then they walled up the rivercourse down by the farms and dammed up a bit higher up in the river, so that the floods would get smaller.
   10. At Indre Sunde in the 1950s there was a big stone and earthslide from the ravine between Sunde and Geilane. The slide was triggered by a very powerful and very local rainstorm, and took with its masses out into the water.
   11. Storhillaren, a big stone up in the mountainside over Ytre Sunde, will probably fall in the terrain sometime in the future. It is on par with several buses, and if one assumes that a bus has a volume of 100-150 cubic meters, we can assume that Storhilleren is several hundred tons heavy!
   12. Under Grovanipa, there are two holes in the mountain wall that are called Omnane (The ovens). An old yarn that was told to the children was that a dog crept into Omnane and came out again in Fjærland, almost without fur, because the cave was so narrow.
8. We hope you enjoyed this guided tour in Kjøsnesfjorden, through history and nature. If you are particularly satisfied, please leave a review for us at Google: https://g.page/r/CVfTuvm7VV0xEAE/review . You can also find us and leave a review at TripAdvisor and Facebook.