Ølve is a village in
Kvinnherad
Kvinnherad is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sunnhordland, along the Hardangerfjorden. The municipality was the 5th in size in former Hordaland county.
The administrative centre of the mu ...
municipality in
Vestland
Vestland is a county in Norway established on 1 January 2020. The county is located in Western Norway and it is centred around the city of Bergen, Norway's second largest city. The administrative centre of the county is the city of Bergen, where t ...
county,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
. The village is located along the
Kvinnheradsfjorden in the western part of the municipality. It is the site of
Ølve Church.
Ølve is located near the border with
Bjørnafjorden
Bjørnafjorden is a fjord in Vestland county, Norway. It runs through the municipalities of Austevoll, Bjørnafjorden, and Tysnes. The large island of Tysnesøya (and many small, surrounding islands such as Reksteren) lie along the south side ...
municipality, and it is across the water from
Tysnes
Tysnes () is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sunnhordland. The administrative centre is the village of Uggdal. Other population centres in Tysnes include the villages of VÃ¥ge and Onarhei ...
municipality. Ølve is a farming village, but it is also industrial. Today the biggest part of the production is aimed at the food industry, especially salmon processing.
Mining and geology
There have been ten copper mines and two iron mines on the Ølve Peninsula. Mining continued until 1911. The basis for the operation was the rock greenstone. Many of the mines from the more than 300-year-old industry in Norway are associated with greenstone deposits. Ølve goldworks is well-known from the years 1855–87, when gold was found at Slagget in Hyttevågen in greenish chlorite shale.
Stone baking slates for making flatbread have been mined and processed at several locations in Ølve and Hatlestrand since around 1100. It is the oldest industry in the area. The slates were used around Norway in large numbers and there is also evidence of exports outside Norway.
On Hamarhaug stone carvings thousands of years old of several ships and a couple of human figures have been discovered. Unfortunately, the main ship carving was cut out and stolen some years ago.
References
Villages in Vestland
Kvinnherad
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