Skålafjøro

In a freshly restored warehouse on the harbour at Rosendal you will find an exciting shipbuilding museum: models of wooden boats, drawings, tools and shipping equipment. Most of this hails from Skåluren shipbuilding, which has been in continuous operation since 1855. The collection is housed in an area where there is now an active production of modern fast ferries. Kvinnherad enjoys a long tradition of shipbuilding and shipping. Especially Varaldsøya, Hatlestrand and Ølve were harbours for the Nordland traffic and transport of salted and dried fish. Most of the Hardanger yachts were built in Sunnhordland and the outer parts of Hardanger. In Rosendal a new type of fast-going yachts was developed in the 1870s. The best known of these is Roald Amundsen’s “GJØA”, which was built in Skålafjøra by Knut J. Skaala.