Trip to Lillesand and Randesund
Wednesday 25th of May
Morning: Lillesand and Kaldevell- Guide: Randi Åmdal Mollart (the chairman of the local council) and her husband.
- centre of Lillesand town – old white wooden houses with new ones in the same style – making a new beach in centre.
Kaldevell: recreation area for people in Lillesand and tourists, a very popular place for local people.
- new sand-beaches where there was only coal before because of the harbour for sailing ships with coal.
- reconstruction of old dams in the river, one of the dams is built in an old technique called “bistedam” or coffin-dam. Beautiful construction with logs and stones.
- reconstruction of the old main-road along the coast from Oslo to the south and west of Norway called “Vestlandske hovedvei”. Today its a path following the river several kilometres.
- preservation of an old ice-house along the path. This house was used for keeping the ice cold after it had been cut in the river, and before transporting it abroad with sailing-ships.
- construction of a new salmon-leap to make the salmon go up the river again. The leap was built in concrete. Before the dams had been built, there had been a lot of salmon in the river.
Lunch: RAVNEDALEN PARK in Kristiansand from 1860 – 1870.
- very popular recreation area for local people (earlier it were animals in the park, like turkeys and birds, so this was the start of the Zoo in Kristiansand). Because of the Zoo, Kristiansand is a very popular place for Norwegians to spend their summer holiday.
After lunch: SODEFJED IN RANDESUND, just outside Kristiansand
- guide: Architect Gunnar Knutsen, one of three architects who has designed this area.
- 107 holiday-houses put very closely together in a small village. This is very unusual for Norwegian holiday-houses which tend to lay far from each other. Even the law says that the area between these houses are free to the public, people feel that it is private and wont go there. Sodefjed village is a controversial experiment of putting holiday houses very close together with very private small gardens between the houses.
- the streets are public and also the harbour.
- the houses are put between the rocks and small stone-hills. Like that you get a feeling that they are part of the landscape.
Kristin Berg
Norway
