Road 44 — From Kristiansand to Stavanger

The Road 44 is supposed to be one of the most beautiful roads of Norway. That’s quite true. It is beautiful. It is the first contact we had with the Fjords while driving. You go along serpentine roads bordered by water.

Taking this road you can go from Kristiansand to Stavanger. Kristiansand is known because of the boats that goes between Denmark and Norway which stops there. For three people with a small car (and bikes on the roof) we paid a total of 100€ for the ferry. The road starts a bit west from Kristiansand at Flekkefjord. and goes through Egersund to Stavanger.

There are some interesting stops on the way, I didn’t stop at all of them because of the time but these are the most interesting ones. The first stop was at Helleren.

Helleren.

If you want to visit a strange town, this is your stop. It is part of the Jøssingfjord. This Fjord is known because of an incident in the World War II where english navy succeeded in freeing prisoners from some Germany ships (The Altmark Incident). The term Jøssing means Patriot and this is where the Fjord got his name.

Helleren is situated at the end of the Fjord. It is a small village which only have two houses and both of them are hidden under a cliff. There were built between the end of the 1700’s and the beginning of the 1800’s and abandoned in the 1920’s. It was not long after the first road was opened. They were owned by a farming, fishing and shepherding family.

They were preserved in a very good shape and you can visit the inside. For abandoned houses, you would think it is on the edge of breaking down but not at all. The inside is clean and you could imagine someone living here.

Sogndalstrand.

Sogndalstrand is an old town protected by law because it is part of the Norwegian property. The old house and style is typical of Norway and this town is on many touristic guides.

The city is quite small and you will have to park at the entrance. There are not many parking spots but we arrived around 10AM and we managed to find a small spot to park. Walking, you will pass next to nice houses and some shops. Don’t expect anything too big like Bergen. It is more like Bryggen (the district in Bergen) but next to water.

Hafrsfjord.

When I organized the trip, I saw this pictures of huge stone swords. I though it was on an Island in a middle of nowhere like remains of some Vikings or something.

It is kind of the case for the Vikings because the monument (thats is called Sverds i fjell) is a reminded of the Battle of Hafrsfjord that happened in 872 which resulted in the unification of Norway into one kingdom. It was a big deal and the Norwegian sculptor and artist Fritz Røed was asked to do a monument in 1983. If you look closer on the top of the swords, you will see crowns that represent the three districts that participated in the battle.

Though, it is not in an isolated island at all. It is in the middle of Møllebukta, a town near Stavanger. It is weird because it is just next to a beach where many people go in the summer. Not what I was expecting.

More over, event hough the swords are tall, I though they would be more impressive. It is a nice stop to do though. Norwegian history.

This is where we left Road 44. We didn’t stop at Stavanger because we didn’t want to visit big cities except Oslo. More over we heard it was more kind of an industrial city and we preferred to keep time for visiting the country side and do some hikes.

The article about the hikes is coming soon 🙂

If you stopped somewhere else on the Road 44, please tell us what would have been interesting!