Kjeåsen is a mountain farm (with two farmsteads) in the municipality of

Eidfjord Eidfjord is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The municipality is located in the traditional district of Hardanger. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Eidfjord, where the majority of the municipal populatio ...

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 ...

Hardanger Hardanger is a traditional district in the western part of Norway, dominated by the Hardangerfjord and its inner branches of the Sørfjorden and the Eid Fjord. It consists of the municipalities of Ullensvang, Eidfjord, Ulvik and Kvam, and is l ...

district, 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. The farm lies at an elevation of at the innermost point of the

Simadal Fjord The Simadal Fjord ( no, Simadalsfjorden) is a branch of the Eid Fjord in the municipality of Eidfjord in Vestland, Norway. The Simadal Fjord is the innermost branch of the Hardangerfjorden, Hardanger Fjord. It is long and extends east from its mo ...

. The farm is no longer being worked, and one person lives there during the summer. The site is popular with tourists, especially Swedes. The farm has been referred to as "the world's most inaccessible farm." Kjeåsen can be reached on foot up the steep path from the

Sima Hydroelectric Power Station The Sima Power Station is a hydroelectric power station located in the municipality Eidfjord 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 B ...

. This was the farm's road until 1974, and the trip takes about 1½ to 2 hours each way. Kjeåsen also has what is known as "the world's most expensive farm road"; it is long, of which approximately consists of a

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

from the

Sima Valley The Sima Valley ( no, Simadal) is a river valley in the municipality of Eidfjord in Vestland county, Norway. The long valley begins below Lake Rembesdal, with an elevation of , which is one of the sources of the Sima River. The valley then runs ...

to the farm. The tunnel has a single lane, with driving directions scheduled up on the hour and down every half hour. The road and tunnel to Kjeåsen were built in 1974 in connection with hydroelectric development works in the Sima Valley. The tunnel has now been outfitted with lights. Walking and cycling are not permitted in the tunnel. The name ''Kjeåsen'' comes from ''kje'' '

kid Kid, Kids, KIDS, and K.I.D.S. may refer to: Common meanings * Colloquial term for a child or other young person ** Also for a parent's offspring regardless of age * Engage in joking * Young goats * The goat meat of young goats * Kidskin, leath ...

' and ''ås'' 'hill', inflected for

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...

. The farm has been inhabited at least since the 1650s. Until the road up to the farm was built, all transport took place on the steep path from the bottom of the fjord. In the 1930s a cable car was built that could carry food and other material up to the farm. However, the residents of Kjeåsen still had to use the trail as before. The outlying farmstead at Kjeåsen was vacated in 1962, and since 2010 the other farmstead has been inhabited only in the summer. The outlying farmstead was sold in 2016 after several hundred years in the same family. The Swedish author Bror Ekström visited Kjeåsen in the 1950s and wrote a book about the people living there. His work, ''Folket på Kieåsen'' (The People of Kjeåsen), was first published in 1958 and became very popular. In Norway,

Halldor O. Opedal Halldor Olson Opedal (May 26, 1895 – January 17, 1986) was a Norwegian teacher and folklorist from Lofthus in the Hardanger district. Opedal was trained as a teacher and worked in Tyssedal for 37 years. He traveled extensively in the area and c ...

published ''Kjeåsfolket i Hardanger. Soga om eit utkantfolk'' (The People of Kjeåsen in Hardanger. The Story of an Unknown People) in 1980. In 2001, Reinhard Kungel made a film for the German broadcaster ARD about the last mountain farmers in Norway. In Kjeåsen, he portrayed the last inhabitant, Bjorg Wiik. The Norwegian broadcasting company

NRK NRK, an abbreviation of the Norwegian ''Norsk Rikskringkasting Aksjeselskap, AS'', generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and ...

aired a program about Kjeåsen in its series ''Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu'' (Where No One Would Think Anyone Could Live) in 2002.

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio AB (, "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a licensing fee, the level of which is d ...

, the Swedish national radio broadcaster, has also aired a program about the farm.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kjeasen Farms in Vestland Eidfjord