Category:Old roads of Norway

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The Old roads of Norway provides a historical context for important trade and military routes.

Map of Norway from 1668
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Map of Norway from 1668

The term vei in the 1500s does not mean road in the modern sense; the meaning was quite different in 16th century Norway than it is now. Then the farmers were required to maintain the road over that portion of land which they owned. The property owners by law must maintain the roadway eight (8) alen wide (the alen is an archaic unit of Norwegian measure equal to 0.6275 meters so an 8 alen road was approximately 5 meters wide (~16 feet)). But this only required that the landowner cut the woods back to provide a way 5 meters wide; the road was still only a rough path—in the mountainous regions often extremely rough. The sense of this road can be understood best when one realizes that the first road outside of a city over which a wagon or carriage could travel was built in 1624 from Hokksund to Kongsberg to provide access to cart heavy machinery up to the workings at the mines there.

Important 16th century routes in Norway include:


Pages in category "Old roads of Norway"

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