Things to do

Viking history

Avaldsnes, on Karmøy, was a Viking-age royal seat with a reconstructed longhouse at the Nordvegen Viking farm, while Stavanger's Viking House uses VR to recreate the Battle of Hafrsfjord. That battle, traditionally dated to 872 CE, is marked in the city itself by Sverd i Fjell — three bronze swords roughly 10 m tall, planted point-down at Hafrsfjord in 1983. Together the sites cover the unification of Norway under Harald Fairhair, a founding story with real archaeology behind part of it.