Aurland
9 villages
Click a marker to visit a village. Press the MAP tab, or Esc, to tuck the map away.
Nine villages along a fjord that carved this family’s name into the map — gathered here, one place at a time.
A fjord, a family, a folder of old photographs
Aurland is a small municipality in Vestland county, western Norway, wrapped around two arms of the Sognefjord system: the Aurlandsfjord and, further west, the Nærøyfjord — narrow enough, and dramatic enough, to have been named a UNESCO World Heritage site in its own right.
Away from the water the land climbs fast, from fjord-level farms to the high mountain plateau of Aurlandsfjellet in a matter of a few kilometers — which is exactly why the villages here grew up scattered, self-sufficient, and connected mostly by boat rather than by road, well into the twentieth century.
This site follows nine of those villages — the ones that make up the story of the Hjellum family and the wider Aurland parish. Use the map in the upper corner, or the villages below, to visit each one.
