Ulvøysund is a village and an outport in the municipality of

Lillesand Lillesand () is municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Sørlandet. The administrative center of the municipality is the town of Lillesand. Some of the larger villages in Lillesand municipality include ...

Agder Agder is a counties of Norway, county () and districts of Norway, traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Au ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The village lies on the east side of the Kvåsefjorden on the island of Ulvøya. Just northeast of Ulvøysund is the entrance to the Blindleia

inland waterway A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other ways. A first distinction is necessary bet ...

which leads towards the town of

. The village is connected to the mainland by road. The nearby village of

Ribe Ribe () is a town in south-west Jutland, Denmark, with a population of 8,367 (2025). It is the seat of the Diocese of Ribe. Until 1 January 2007, Ribe was the seat of both a surrounding municipality and county. It is now part of the enlarged E ...

lies about straight north of Ulvøysund. The village was historically used as an outport along the Skaggerak coast for the large ships that couldn't navigate inland through the

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

to the towns on the mainland.

History

The oldest sign of activity in Ulvøysund, is an old shipwreck on the approach of Kvåsefjorden. It was archaeologically investigated in 2011 by the Norwegian Maritime Museum, and a piece of a

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) Family (biology), family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally fo ...

from the finding was later Carbon-14 dated to the period between the years 1020-1030. In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, Ulvøysund had a permanent population. During the 14th century a

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

from

Bergen Bergen (, ) is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, second-largest city in Norway after the capital Oslo. By May 20 ...

wrote a letter (that still exists today) saying that he was stuck in Ulvøysund due to the weather. A compass rose carved into the rock on the island of Ulvøya is possibly from the 15th century. The outport is mentioned on Dutch maps from the 16th century as ''Wolfsondt''. Ulvøysund's oldest house still standing and it is used as a guest house. The house's oldest parts are probably from the 17th century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ulvoysund Lillesand Villages in Agder