"A farm on every hill"

Nordberg.

The first farms at Lista emerged around 6000 years ago. The establishment of the farms were connected to the start of keeping animals and of creating arable land.

Several of the farms are placed on hills near the sea. Here is good soil and access to all the riches of the ocean. There are also many farms placed in the transition between the flat landscape of Lista and the heathland beyond. Locations between heathland and peatbogs meant both of these resources could be exploited.

There are few finds from the iron-age at Lista. In written sources several of today’s farms are mentioned in the “Building tax” from 1594. Many of the farms like Vere have names dating further back in time. It is therefore possible that the Iron-age farms are situated underneath today’s farms.

In the selected cultural landscape at Vest-Lista we find the farms Stave, Vere, Penne, Kjølleberg, Nordberg, Skeibrok, Hervoll, Jølle, Håle, Senegre and Rudjord.

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"There lies a strange land furthermost to the South West of Norway, Listeland. This wondrous, big, flat land, over 10 kilometres long, but barely 5 kilometres wide, facing nothing less but the North Sea, with the densest population in all of Vest-Agder, with one village-like cluster of houses after the other spread across it all from the outermost of the shore line to just up under the heaths, in all of the kingdom of Norway it is something quite unique."

Archaeologist Jan Petersen 1925