Rystestøylen is an old mountain farm for the farms at Raudeberg. There could be as many as 40 cows there in the summer. Girls from the farms took care of the milking, and had to hike up every evening and morning six days a week. They took Sundays off because then their parents took over the milking chores. About 1950, the operation of the mountain farm came to an end. In 1946, a new "gardfjøs" (literally: farm cow shed) was built at Rystestøylen. When the operation of the mountain farm ended in 1950, the house was no longer maintained properly and decay set in. In 1999, the house was rebuilt on the initiative of the foundation called Rystestøylen. People wanted it to be a monument to the work at the mountain farm and in the mountains.
The postal road in Gulen was formerly a part of the "Trondhjemske" postal road. In 1868, the road was no longer used as a postal road as the post was transported by steamer to Vadheim.
In 1900 the topographer Amund Helland described the river of Kvinnaelva with these few words: ".. a short watercourse, running southwards - with the picturesque Kvinnefos cascading into the Sognefjord." A landscape protection report a hundred years later follows up with: "The Kvinnefossen waterfall (..) one of the finest waterfalls along the Sognefjord."
The Dyrstad farm is located on the western side of the Berstadvatnet lake in the valley of Berstaddalen, some 200 metres above sea level. The road leading up from the lake to the old house foundations is steep, and, according to old sources, the farm has been deserted several times because of rock slides and snow avalanches.
In the spring of 1964 there was some cultivation work going on at the farm of Skaim. This work included removing some rock heaps left from clearing the fields and the bulldozer then touched some rather big rock slabs at the bottom of the heap. Lars Vikesland, the elder, realizing that this could be an old grave, stopped the work and contacted the local bailiff, who in turn contacted the Historical Museum in Bergen. The museum sent experts to the site and they quickly established that this was a prehistoric grave find. The excavation was soon under way, and a new chapter was added to the oldest part of the history of the farm.
Stakaldeneset is a barren and west-facing point that rises steeply from the Eikefjord at the strait of Helgøysundet. In the late 1970s, Svein Brandsøy made a find which meant that the textbooks on the Stone Age in Norway had to be rewritten.
The road connection between the islands of Mjømna and Byrknesøy was officially opened on 13 September 1997. This was 40 years after the county governor Nikolai Schei and the county director of public roads Egil Abrahamsen for the first time came to the islands to assess the possibility of linking the islands. The bridge between Sandøy and Mjømna was completed in 1993, and in 2006, the construction work was started to connect the islands to the mainland by road and bridge.
During the Second World War, there was on the island of Oldra a depot with large quantities of weapons and other war materials. The depot was disclosed by a letter which came into German hands. The letter was written to the well-known resistance member and Communist Peder Furubotn. Because of this, the resistance member Schrøder Evensen was arrested, and tortured to point out the depot. He was later able to jump overboard from a Gestapo vessel and drowned in the night of 7 to 8 September, 1944. In this way he probably saved the lives of many resistance people.
About 100 metres to the east of the Stedje church in Sogndal there is a runic stone measuring 1.89 metres in height and 0.39 metres in width. The stone was probably raised here some time in the Middle Ages.
The missionary bishop Hans Paludan Smith Schreuder (1817-1882), born in Sogndal, was the first Norwegian missionary in Africa. He started his missionary work in Zululand in 1850, working with the Zulu people until his death in 1882. In the autumn of 1915, a monument was erected on his grave in Untunjambili. The monument was consecrated the following year.
In former days travelling along the Norwegian coast took mostly place on sea. The old roads across the strips of land called Mannseidet and Dragseidet at Selje were important communication links along the coast, and they have always been used to avoid crossing the treacherous waters of Stadlandet by boat. Mannseidet was therefore both a safer and shorter alternative if you wanted to og north or south. Besides, the landing connections for boats on both sides were excellent. Today the road across Mannseidet is a national cultural site.
A small greenstone (greenschist) axe from the Stone Age may be an indication that there has been a settlement since prehistoric times in the village of Dyrdal on the Nærøyfjord. Other finds, such as a burial mound at the farm Drægo and a field of three burial mounds at the Dyrdal farm dating from the Younger Iron Age all point in the same direction. The hamlet is known for its cluster farmyard down by the fjord and for the hospitality offered to hikers on the high farm of Drægo. In the hamlet that once had more than 100 inhabitants, there are at present no farms in operation.
On 10 July 1908, the Norwegian Parliament - Stortinget - decided to build a railway line between Myrdal and Flåm. The work was not begun until 1923, and only in 1946 was the railway line completely finished. Many people were involved in building the steepest railway line in Norway in a very difficult terrain. Over a distance of 20 kilometres there are 20 tunnels. In the period between 1924 and 1949 6.165.350 man-hours in all were carried out. For close to 20 years the valley of Flåmsdalen was the workplace for several hundred people.
After years on the road between schoolhouse, private homes, and vicarage barn, it was an unbelievable relief for the Hardbakke youth association when they could move into their own house in 1933. The house became a useful and dear place, where the Solund community could get together during 35 years, until it was destroyed by fire.
Mjømna church is a so-called longchurch made of wood situated on the island of Mjømna, in the far western outskirts of the municipality of Gulen. The church has a seating capacity of 310, and was consecrated on 5 November, 1901, by bishop Johan Willoch Erichsen. Anders Korsvold from Gulen was both architect and builder. The church is a "sokn" church for the "sokn" of Mjømna in the parish of Gulen. The ¿sokn" was established by royal decree on 23 June, 1900.