For the time beeing I am living in the small town Stjordal near Trondheim in Norway

Karmøy is an island located somwhat mid-way between Bergen and Stavanger on the south-west coast of Norway.

Skudeneshavn you can find on the southmost part of the island and it was, and still is to some content a fishing harbour. Not much fish longer but the village still is very much like it was 150 years ago and it's one of the best preserved town of this kind in Norway.

The oldest part of the town consists mainly of small wooden houses painted white. A curious thing is that the backside of some houses are painted yellow or red. The reason for this is, I was told, was that white paint in the old days was very expensive and not everbody could afford to paint the whole house white and some people have kept this tradition although times have changed regarding the prices of paint.

Today this old town is a tourist atraction but also a very "live" town. It has some 3000 residents and the largest company employs ca. 250 people.

If you buy a house here you have to live in it, not buy it to use it as a summer residence. And that is a good thing otherwise I'm afraid most of this nice houses would have been empty in winter.

I think it is important to take care of places like this for the generations to come. It may not be practical and modern and probably a housewife's nightmare with this small windows, often timber walls inside, the wooden floors difficult to keep clean etc. but to me that is a sacrifice I'm willing to do.

For those of you who would like to know a little more about this place may click on the picture......

Below you can see an aerial photograph of my house in Gunnarsbakken 6. The house is in the centre of the picture. This house was built in 1845 and is fairly original. Click the picture to get a full size photo.

Photo by Jan Ove Moen

and here you can see the house from the garden side. As you can see, this house is also painted in another colour on the "back".

I must say that I am very happy with this house, it got soul....

But now I'm looking forward to the summer of -99......

Most photos on this page by Alf Magne Grindhaug

More pictures from Skudeneshavn? Click here