Where to Stay in Hornindal, Møre og Romsdal fylke

What is Hornindal known for?

Hornindalsvatnet is the deepest lake in Northern Europe, and the old Hornindal municipality occupied its eastern end while Eid Municipality held the rest of the water. Grodås was the administrative centre. Hornindal kirke and the Anders Svor Museum are the two named draws, and the Nordfjord district around them gives the valley its older identity, older than any of the boundary changes.

Volda Municipality took the ground in 2020.

What are the main landmarks in Hornindal?

Hornindal kirke is the valley's church, and it carries the old municipality's name. The Anders Svor Museum is the other fixed point, and between the two of them they account for most of what a visitor to Hornindal comes to look at indoors. Outdoors it is the lake.

Hornindalsvatnet takes the outdoor attention, deep enough to hold the record for Northern Europe, and the stretch that belonged to Hornindal is its eastern end.

What is the history of Hornindal?

Hornindal has been made and unmade twice. The municipality was established in 1867 and lasted until 1965, when it was dissolved, and then it was re-established in 1977 and ran for another stretch before it was dissolved again in 2020. Sogn og Fjordane held it through both.

Nordfjord is the older frame, the traditional district that sat under every county arrangement the valley has been given and outlasted all of them. Grodås carried the administrative work in both incarnations, while the boundaries around it were drawn, erased, and drawn again. The dissolution in 2020 moved the ground into Volda Municipality and, with it, out of Sogn og Fjordane and into Møre og Romsdal, so the valley changed county without moving an inch.

The lake did not change. Hornindalsvatnet still runs from the old Hornindal ground into Eid Municipality, and it is still the deepest lake in Northern Europe, whatever is written on the map above it. The Anders Svor Museum keeps the name in circulation.

Hornindal survives as the name of the valley and the church rather than as a unit of government.

Where is Hornindal?

The old municipality covers the ground at the eastern end of Hornindalsvatnet, in the south-western part of Møre og Romsdal, within the traditional district of Nordfjord in western Norway. Water and valley split it. Hornindalsvatnet continues into Eid Municipality, so only its eastern end belongs here, and the rest of the old Hornindal is the valley ground gathered around Grodås.

Volda Municipality draws the outer line.

What is the climate of Hornindal?

Hornindalsvatnet is deep enough that it takes a long time to warm and a long time to cool, which softens the edges of both seasons for the ground at its eastern end. Depth holds the temperature steady. Weather reaches the valley off the open ocean through Nordfjord, and rain is a normal condition rather than an interruption.

Summers by the water stay cool.

How do you get to Hornindal?

Arrival is by road. Grodås is the point of arrival, and the routes in come either along Hornindalsvatnet from Eid Municipality or from the rest of Volda Municipality, which the old Hornindal ground now belongs to. Nordfjord is the district a traveller is crossing to get here.

Distances inside the old municipality are small, so a base at Grodås puts Hornindal kirke, the Anders Svor Museum, and the lake shore within a short drive of one another.