Storrsheia

Access

There are two ways to get to this location:

1. From E39 towards Stavanger, after passing Vikeså and up the hill, park in the first parking place on your right (by the lake Storrsheivatnet). Walk along the E39 for a couple hundred meters towards the forest. Marked path from there. Information at the parking place. It takes around 30 min one way. 
2. From Vikeså: park at the Vikeså school and walk towards Skjævelandsvegen and further opp the hill (Buberget). Follow the gravel road further up towards the lake (Storrsheivatnet). Afterwards, follow the path along the lake. Marked path from there. Around 3 hours both ways.  

You can also reach this place by e-bike from Egersund – it takes around 4-5 hours both ways. 

Special conditions:

• Park at the parking place and show respect for private land.
• Show respect to animals along the trail.
• Don’t forget to close grinds behind you so that animals would not get away.
• Dogs have to be on leash
• Leave nothing but footprints!

Culture and history

A prehistoric farmyard at Vikeså

In the outskirts of the farms Vikeså and Store Svela there are six farmhouses from the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. There are few places in Norway, if any, where there are so many prehistoric farmhouses within such a small area as here. Starting from south and northbound, the farms are called Auglend, Storrsheia, Uadal, Lerkebakken, Hadland and Monæ. They are located between 245asl and 125asl with the Lerkebakken highest and Auglend lowest.

When were the farms settled?

Excavations at Storrsheia and at Auglend showed that these two farms were settled in a migration period, from the mid-300s until the end of the 500s AD. Moreover, people lived at Storrsheia also in the Viking Age (approx. 800-1050 AD).

The other remains have not been investigated, but it is reasonable to believe that they were settled at the same time as Storrsheia and Auglend and that they have been abandoned towards the end of the 500s AD.

Storrsheia as a laboratory

It is still unclear why farms like this were established at the beginning of the migration period. Among the reasons could be immigration or a strong population growth in the previous years.

It is just as unclear why the farms were abandoned towards the end of the 500s. It might have been reorganization of the farming operations, depletion of the soil, some sort of calamity or perhaps pestilence.

The answers may be hidden as archaeological traces between the rocks and in the soil at the six abandoned gardens. Therefore, the farm area around Storrsheia can be called a laboratory for exploration of the Iron Age farm history in Norway.

Information from the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger.