Follese is a village on the island of

Askøy Askøy is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The island municipality is located in the Midhordland district of the county, sitting in a large group of islands immediately northwest of the city of Bergen. The administrative centre of the ...

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 ...

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 the ...

. As of 2017, Follese had 2539 inhabitants including the area of Hetlevik to the north.

History

Until the Reformation, most of Askøy was church and monastery property, but then became crown property – the King's property. Shortly afterwards, the king sold much of the estate to rich men who realized that buying royal estates was a good investment. In this way, Jan von der Lippe, a merchant from Bergen, became the owner of gnr. 12 Follese,

. In 1756, he put the farm up for sale, and five of the builders, later known as the "owners", bought the whole thing – Follese inland and outland, Skogen, Skiftesvik and Marikoven with associated islands and islets. The other users were builders as before, and had to pay their fee to the "owners". Between the wars, United Sardines Factories ran a large canning factory on Follesø with up to 150 employees. The entire factory was lost in a violent fire in 1939.

Economy

Follese has a furniture, food, and plastics industry. There is also a small port for leisure boats. Norwegian ice cream company, Isbjørn Is, is headquartered in Follese.

References

Askøy Villages in Vestland {{norway-stub