Stalheim is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

in the municipality

Voss Voss () is a municipality and a traditional district in Vestland county, Norway. The administrative center of the municipality is the village of Vossevangen. Other villages include Bolstadøyri, Borstrondi, Evanger, Kvitheim, Mjølfjell, ...

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 the ...

. The small village lies along the

European route E16 European route E16 is the designation of a main west-east road through Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, from Derry to Gävle, via Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, previously by ferry to Bergen, Voss, through the Gudvanga Tunnel and th ...

highway in the northeastern part of the municipality. The village sits at a high point in the inner part of the Nærøydalen valley which leads northeastwards towards the Nærøyfjorden. The highway runs through a series of tunnels to descend into the valley; in 2021 authorities said that the old road ''Stalheimskleivi'' will be closed for cars and buses forever; the road has

hairpin turns A hairpin turn (also hairpin bend or hairpin corner) is a bend in a road with a very acute inner angle, making it necessary for an oncoming vehicle to turn about 180° to continue on the road. It is named for its resemblance to a bent metal hai ...

and 20% grade. The Stalheimsfossen

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...

is the most notable sight in the area. The view from Stalheim is well known from several paintings, in particular

Johan Christian Dahl Johan Christian Claussen Dahl (24 February 178814 October 1857), often known as or , was a Danish-Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the "golden age" of Norwegian painting, and, by some ...

's painting '' Fra Stalheim'' from 1842. ''Sivlesteinen'', a memorial of the poet Per Sivle, was raised by Noregs Ungdomslag and other organizations at Stalheim in 1909.

History

In 1943

Lebensborn Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "hea ...

activity took over the use of Stalheim Hotel.Ho skulle bli Hitlers ideal-barn
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Media gallery

File:Dahl-Stalheim.jpg, Dahl's '' Fra Stalheim'' (1842) File:Sivlesteinen-Stalheim.JPG, Per Sivle memorial stone at Stalheim File:Stalheimskleiva.jpg, View of the old Stalheimskleiva road (with the hotel at the top) File:Stalheim Hotel and Naerodalen Hardanger Fjord Norway.jpg, View of the Hotel, looking down into the Nærøydalen valley

References

Voss Villages in Vestland {{Vestland-geo-stub