Herøy Kystmuseum, the Herøy Coastal Museum, sits on the tiny island of Herøya, linked by a short bridge from Nautøya. It is a small place, easy to drive past, but there is more here than first meets the eye.
The museum is built around a former trading post and parsonage. The oldest part of the main building dates to 1752. Inside, the rooms are furnished the way they would have looked in the 19th century, and a separate gallery covers the region's connection to Arctic seal hunting. The boathouse displays various traditional boat types and fishing equipment. Among them is a replica of the Kvalsundfæring, a small rowing boat reconstructed from archaeological remains found nearby on Nerlandsøya.
That find is worth knowing about. In 1920, two vessels were discovered buried in a marsh at Kvalsund, just across the water from the museum. The larger ship was about 18 metres long, the smaller boat about 9.5 metres. Both had been deliberately broken apart and sunk into the bog, almost certainly as a ritual offering. Recent tree-ring dating places them around 780 to 800 AD, right at the threshold of the Viking Age. The Kvalsund ship is considered a key link in Scandinavian shipbuilding, more advanced than the older Danish Nydam boat from around 320 AD, but less sophisticated than the Oseberg ship from 820 AD. Its shape suggests it may have carried a sail, which would make it one of the earliest Scandinavian vessels to do so. The original remains are in Bergen Museum, but the story belongs to this coast.
Moored at the museum is the Anna Olava, a reconstruction of a traditional Sunnmøre sailing vessel built in 2000 based on an old boat found at Håkonsholmen in Ulstein.
The island of Herøya itself has been a gathering place for over a thousand years. In the Middle Ages it had a Thing assembly site, and the ruins of a 12th-century Romanesque stone church still stand on the eastern side.
The museum is built around a former trading post and parsonage. The oldest part of the main building dates to 1752. Inside, the rooms are furnished the way they would have looked in the 19th century, and a separate gallery covers the region's connection to Arctic seal hunting. The boathouse displays various traditional boat types and fishing equipment. Among them is a replica of the Kvalsundfæring, a small rowing boat reconstructed from archaeological remains found nearby on Nerlandsøya.
That find is worth knowing about. In 1920, two vessels were discovered buried in a marsh at Kvalsund, just across the water from the museum. The larger ship was about 18 metres long, the smaller boat about 9.5 metres. Both had been deliberately broken apart and sunk into the bog, almost certainly as a ritual offering. Recent tree-ring dating places them around 780 to 800 AD, right at the threshold of the Viking Age. The Kvalsund ship is considered a key link in Scandinavian shipbuilding, more advanced than the older Danish Nydam boat from around 320 AD, but less sophisticated than the Oseberg ship from 820 AD. Its shape suggests it may have carried a sail, which would make it one of the earliest Scandinavian vessels to do so. The original remains are in Bergen Museum, but the story belongs to this coast.
Moored at the museum is the Anna Olava, a reconstruction of a traditional Sunnmøre sailing vessel built in 2000 based on an old boat found at Håkonsholmen in Ulstein.
The island of Herøya itself has been a gathering place for over a thousand years. In the Middle Ages it had a Thing assembly site, and the ruins of a 12th-century Romanesque stone church still stand on the eastern side.