The Sima is a river 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 ...

Hordaland Hordaland () was a county in Norway, bordering Sogn og Fjordane, Buskerud, Telemark, and Rogaland counties. Hordaland was the third largest county, after Akershus and Oslo, by population. The county government was the Hordaland County Municipal ...

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 river is long, and it has a

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

of and an average discharge of . The river has its source on the west side of the Hardanger Glacier, at a

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around the ...

called ''Demmevatn'' at an elevation of . The river then flows west from Lake Rembesdal (''Rembesdalsvatn''), with an elevation of , into the deep Sima Valley and past the former high Rembesdal Falls (''Rembesdalsfossen''), which is now dry because of hydroelectric plant infrastructure. In the Sima Valley the river is joined by the Skytjedal River (''Skytjedalselva''), a left tributary known for ''Skytjefossen'', a high waterfall. The river continues west until its mouth at the head 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 ...

. Together with the nearby Bjoreio River to the south, the Sima River has been developed for power production at 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 ...

. The power station is located in the mountains below

Kjeåsen Kjeåsen is a mountain farm (with two farmsteads) in the municipality of Eidfjord in Norway's Hardanger district, in Vestland county. The farm lies at an elevation of at the innermost point of the Simadal Fjord. The farm is no longer being worked ...

on the north side of the Simadal Fjord.

References

Rivers of Vestland Eidfjord {{Norway-river-stub