The culture environment in Ny-Hellesund, south of Kristiansand, is typical for the outports along the Southern Norway regional coastline between 1650 and 1880. In October 2016 the government protected this southern idyll.

 

“Ny-Hellesund oozes history and represents the very concept of Sørlandet (‘Southern Norway’). It has a culture environment that shows how important the outports were for shipping before motorized vessels were put to use. Today, the outports are the setting for the leisure culture, and they play an important role for tourism,” said the then Minister for Climate and the Environment Vidar Helgesen.

 

The outports along the Southern Norway coast are among the most important cultural monuments from Norway’s maritime history and they are also unique in an international context. Ny-Hellesund was an important supply port, stopping place and emergency port for the national and international sailing fleets in the trade between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea areas in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

 

Culture environment protection is considered to be like national parks for cultural heritage management. The original building environment is very well preserved. The culture environment in Ny-Hellesund is representative of outports along the Southern Norway region’s coast from about 1650 to 1880. The protection includes 103 buildings, about 30 hectares of land area and 16.9 hectares of sea area for a total of 47 hectares.

 

The protection is also supposed to safeguard the values that are associated to the outport society’s transition to primary industries such as agriculture and fishing at the end of the sailing ship period and recreational facilities from the 1920s and 1930s and into the post-war period.

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