Hellesylt is a small village in

Stranda Municipality Stranda is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Stranda. Stranda consists of three smaller villages and one larger central village ...

Møre og Romsdal Møre og Romsdal (; en, Møre and Romsdal) is a county in the northernmost part of Western Norway. It borders the counties of Trøndelag, Innlandet, and Vestland. The county administration is located in the town of Molde, while Ålesund is the ...

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 lies at the head of the

Sunnylvsfjorden The Sunnylvsfjorden is a fjord in Stranda and Fjord in the Møre og Romsdal county of Norway. The long Sunnylvsfjorden is one of the innermost branches of the large Storfjorden. The fjord ranges from wide and reaches below sea level at its de ...

, which is a branch of the Storfjorden, and which the more famous

Geirangerfjorden The Geiranger Fjord ( no, Geirangerfjorden) is a fjord in the Sunnmøre region of Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located entirely in the Stranda Municipality. It is a branch off the Sunnylvsfjorden, which is a branch off the Storfjo ...

in turn branches off nearby. The village has a population (2018) of 258 and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopul ...

of . There are several hundred other people living in the surrounding valley area as well. In the summertime, thousands of tourists travel through or stay in Hellesylt each day. Most of them take the

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

to the nearby village of

Geiranger Geiranger is a small tourist village in Sunnmøre region of Møre og Romsdal county in the western part of Norway. It is in the municipality of Stranda at the head of the Geirangerfjorden, which is a branch of the large Storfjorden. The nearest ...

, which in high season runs every one and a half hours. There is also a cruise ship pier that can handle very large ships. The village is surrounded by mountains and valleys. The

Sunnylven Church Sunnylven Church ( no, Sunnylven kyrkje) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Stranda Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located in the village of Hellesylt, at the end of the Sunnylvsfjorden. It is the church for the ...

is located in Hellesylt, which was the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or ...

of the former municipality of

Sunnylven Sunnylven is a former municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. The municipality existed from 1838 until its dissolution in 1965. Since that time, it has made up the southern part of the present-day Stranda Municipality. It encompassed ...

. Hellesylt is under constant threat from the mountain Åkerneset, which is about to erode into the Sunnylvsfjord. A collapse could cause a

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

destroying most of downtown Hellesylt.

In popular culture

*The 1991 Icelandic film The White Viking was shot in Hellesylt. *Released in March 2016, "The Wave (Bølgen)" is a Norwegian disaster movie based on the premise of a rock slide from the mountain Åkerneset. *The fictional city of Kattegat in the tv-series ''

Vikings Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

'' used Hellesynt as the backdrop. The series is shot in

Wicklow Wicklow ( ; ga, Cill Mhantáin , meaning 'church of the toothless one'; non, Víkingaló) is the county town of County Wicklow in Ireland. It is located south of Dublin on the east coast of the island. According to the 2016 census, it has ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

and digitally inserted Hellesynt in the background.

References

External links

Hellesylt Info
Villages in Møre og Romsdal Stranda {{MøreRomsdal-geo-stub