Dry-laid walls
High stone construction executed entirely by hand.
Auglanda — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0
A stretch of nineteenth-century royal road in the Lærdal valley, built of hand-laid stone climbing the slope in bends and retaining walls, and among the best surviving examples of old Norwegian road engineering. The road is part of the Bergen Royal Road that linked Oslo to Bergen, and was for centuries the main artery between eastern and western Norway. The present stretch was built in 1843 to replace an older and steeper road — the original was severe enough that carts were sometimes taken apart and carried. What distinguishes it visually is the stonework: high dry-laid retaining walls, calculated bends and a stone arched bridge. All of it was executed by hand. The route today is for walking only and takes about an hour there and back from the car park. A short distance away stands Borgund stave church, among the most complete stave churches in Norway.
High stone construction executed entirely by hand.
The older road was steep enough to require it.
It linked east to west for centuries before modern roads.
Near Borgund, Lærdal
Medieval churches built entirely of wood on a frame of massive vertical posts — stav in Norwegian — rather than horizontal logs. They were once found across northern Europe, but only about twenty-eight survive today, almost all of them in Norway. Their carving mixes Christian crosses with dragons and figures from old Norse myth, a blend reflecting the passage from paganism to Christianity. Borgund is among the most complete and least altered.
The valley is a stage on the road between Oslo and Bergen and holds more than its size suggests: Borgund church and the Vindhella road, the old village of Lærdalsøyri with its protected white timber houses, and the Lærdal tunnel — the world's longest road tunnel at twenty-four kilometres, with blue-lit caverns to break the monotony of the drive. From it you reach Aurland and the Sognefjord.
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