Where to stay in Jondal
Most beds in Jondal gather in the village by the shore, near Jondal kirke, where a handful of guest rooms and holiday houses stand within a short walk of the water and the quay. The centre suits visitors who want the fjord and the old church on the doorstep. It is the natural base.
Up toward the glacier, lodgings near Folgefonna sommerskisenter serve skiers and walkers who come for the ice in the warm months, a higher base above the village in the southern reach of Vestland. Rooms there fill in the season. Out through the farms and along the water of this corner of western Norway, scattered cabins and farm stays offer a quieter night for travellers touring the fjord by car.
Stock thins beyond the village. Reserve well ahead in summer, when the glacier and the fjord draw what visitors Jondal sees across this part of Vestlandet.
About Jondal
What is Jondal known for?
Jondal sits on the water in the southern part of Vestland, a small place known above all for the ice and the church. Folgefonna sommerskisenter draws skiers in the warm months to the glacier ground above the village, a summer ski centre that gives Jondal its name beyond the fjord. The glacier made it.
Down at the shore Jondal kirke marks the old heart of the settlement, and church and glacier together frame a village that grew small and stayed small on the edge of the water in western Norway.
What are the main landmarks in Jondal?
Folgefonna sommerskisenter stands above Jondal on the glacier ground. The centre draws summer skiers to the ice high over the fjord, the chief draw of the place and the thing that carries its name beyond the water. Down at the shore Jondal kirke marks the old centre and gives the village its fixed point by the quay.
The two define the settlement. Glacier and church, the high ice and the low water, together hold the short list of named sights in this small corner of Vestland in western Norway.
What is the history of Jondal?
Jondal grew as a farming and fishing settlement on the fjord in the southern part of Vestland. Life here turned on the water and the land below the glacier, the farms strung along the shore where Jondal kirke rose to serve the people of the parish through the long centuries on this edge of western Norway. The church anchored the village.
Generation after generation worked the steep ground and the fjord below the ice of the high country above the settlement. For most of its history Jondal stood as its own municipality, a small administrative unit on the water in this reach of Vestlandet. The glacier above the village drew the wider world only in later years, when Folgefonna sommerskisenter opened the high ice to summer skiers and gave the small place a name beyond the fjord.
Through the changes the village kept its shape, gathered around Jondal kirke and the quay, a settlement that held its place on the shore as Vestland reorganised the old municipalities around it.
Where is Jondal?
Jondal lies on the fjord in the southern part of Vestland, in western Norway. The village gathers on the narrow shore between the water and the steep land, with Jondal kirke at the old centre and the high glacier ground of Folgefonna sommerskisenter rising behind. Water below, ice above.
The settlement holds to the strip of level land at the edge of the fjord, the farms reaching up the slopes toward the white country of the glacier that frames this small corner of Vestlandet.
What is the climate of Jondal?
Jondal has the wet, mild maritime climate of the western Norwegian fjords. Winters stay cool and damp on the shore rather than bitter, the fjord water holding hard frost off the low ground while heavy snow piles on the high glacier country above the village. Summers are short and green.
Rain off the Atlantic reaches deep into Vestland in every season, feeding the ice of the high country even as the shore around Jondal kirke warms under the long northern daylight of the western Norway summer.
How do you get to Jondal?
Jondal sits off the main roads on the fjord in southern Vestland. Travellers reach the village by the shore road and the fjord crossings that thread this part of western Norway, the route running down to the quay near Jondal kirke. Most come by car.
The roads and ferries of the fjord carry the traffic in toward the village and on up to the glacier ground of Folgefonna sommerskisenter, while the wider airports and hubs of Vestlandet handle the longer journeys of visitors reaching this corner of the fjord from farther afield.