Fuglesteg

You can park at the local shop in Fortun, 5 km from Skjolden on highway 55 to Lom.Take highway 55 from the car park by the shop. After 500 m: Turn right on to the tractor road through the gate. At Vetleåsen take to the left up the steeper path to Fuglesteg.
(The word Fuglesteg means bird path)

Before 1650 Fuglesteg was part of a larger farm in Fortun. From 1650 it belonged to the church at Dale in Luster until the farmer Sølfest Nilsson bought the farm in 1840. He was the one who built the big farmhouse made of stones from the area. It took five years to complete the work, and it was finished some time between 1810 and 1830. Sølfest came from another mountain farm (Ormelid) in Fortun, where his brother had built a similar stone house some years earlier.

As we can easily imagine, life at Fuglesteg was pretty tough, and the people who lived here got used to hard work from early childhood. It was especially tough for the children who had to walk to school in Fortun on icy paths in all kinds of winter weather.They often had to use crampons to get there.

In 1968 Fuglesteg was abandoned.
In 1985 the wooden part ( the roof) of the stone house was destroyed by fire. In the following years water and ice ruined the stone walls. The future for Fuglesteg seemed grim.

After having planned the operation for several years, and collected money from different sources, Luster Turlag ( Luster Trekking Association) started to rebuild the house in 2004. Fuglesteg is now a part of DNT's network of cabins all over Norway, and the farm has already become a popular destination. (More than 2000 visitors in 2005 after the opening on July 3rd).

DNT: Norwegian Trekking Association

(You can go on from Fuglesteg on a path to the mountain summer farm of Berdalen. There is a road from Berdalen to Turtagrø and a toll road to Årdal)