Rune and Ruth Søvik: Our old Oselvar is in Lysefjorden and was renovated last year. It is around 90 years old. It was made from planks that were not the finest. It is not as wide as usual. Something between a normal boat and a rowing boat for racing.

Hilde Terese Haakonsen: Our Oselvar is from 1958. We keep it in the archipelago outside Lillesand and we are very fond of it.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an Oselvar now, but I wanted to send a couple of photos and a few words about how much the Oselvar boat has meant to me.

In it, I learned to be safe on the water, and went on many rowing trips in the Fanafjord with my father. We used it to pick up fully loaded sacks of shavings for the pig that we had, and we filled the

boat. Logs were transported and turned into firewood. And of course all the fishing trips. When father had the day off, he would set off in his Oselvar, row to Marsteinen and did not come home until late at night.
I learned to row and for a while I transported visitors to Fanaholmen and picked them up again at the agreed time, when I was 9-10 years old.
We had a sail for our Oselvar, and my brother taught me to sail a little (wasn’t all that good).

When I got a little older, friends would join me on lovely rowing trips and many of them learned to row in the Oselvar. I have many good memories connected to our Oselvar boat.

The oldest of the pictures I have sent is from 1924. The picture is from Fanahammeren, my mother Gerd Marie Solheim is 12 years old and sitting up front, her mother Anna Walle is in the boat and Ragnhild Walle is standing on shore.

The second picture is from 1968 and is in the same place. It is a photo of me, returning from a sailing trip and a camping trip in the Fanafjord.

Sincerely, Gunn Solheim

I have been lucky to inherit a fantastically large and beautiful boathouse, where Oselvar boats have been built for generations. A boathouse with soul and a boathouse for the soul – shouldn’t there be an Oselvar there?

We were visiting Os on a Saturday when the Oselvar workshop was open, and we ended up in there, like several times before. We asked us if they knew about any Oselvar boats for sale. Behind us in the queue was a man who has a boathouse on the other side of the river and he had an Oselvar hanging inside his boathouse, and we were lucky enough to buy it!

The Oselvar was built in 1971 or 1972

It was built by Nils Drange or Øvensnilsen as he was called here in Drange.

This is a boat with 2 pairs of oars and with a sail you can rig up. I have only used the sail once and did not fully succeed as there was far too little wind.

Gro Drange Lothe