Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu

Nils Storås has lived most of his life up on the small farm Sulabakk, the only roadless farm that is still inhabited on Sunnmøre. As a Sunnmøring, he is frugal, thrifty and inventive, and the goal is to be self-sufficient. To do this, he has created the strangest aids. Nils Storås is full of invention and humour, and most of all he laughs at himself. But at the bottom lies the seriousness.

If Eva and Kjell Ryvang are to travel from home, they should warn about Sweden. Their home is at the end of a six kilometer long lake, which is half Swedish, half Norwegian, and the lake is the only navigable road to and from Sylen. But in spring and autumn, when the ice is unsafe, the people of Sylen are isolated from the outside world. Just as full, it was here they wanted to come in, after having had enough of the stress and hustle and bustle in the city. Oddgeir Bruaset has met the Ryvang family, whose livelihood is tourism.

I'm stuck here, says Lars Finden, farmer on the Finden beach farm in Finnafjorden in Sogn, where Oddgeir Bruaset takes us this time. For a time, sixty people lived in the small hamlet, now Lars Finden is alone, together with two minor children. Here he makes a living from goat herding and tourism, and he is doing well. But the nearest neighbor is a half-hour boat ride away.

Kjeåsen lies on a mountain shelf, 530 steep meters above the Hardangerfjord. The old path to the farm was so difficult to walk that half of those who tried turned back. The Oslo girl Bjørg Wiik also climbed up here. She wanted to take care of her aunt, the last one still alive up on the mountain shelf. But after her aunt died, Bjørg stayed. She had discovered that Kjeåsen had something that the big city could never give her. Oddgeir Bruaset has met the woman who still lives at Kjeåsen, alone and at the age of 70.

We live below the poverty line, but it is not a lack of money that is our biggest problem. The difficulties we have encountered with the governing authorities are worse, says Tommy Rodahl. Together with his wife, he said goodbye to city life and moved to a depopulated fishing village far west in the sea. Now the two have become four, says the presenter, Oddgeir Bruaset.

I want to use my hands for something other than moving paper, said Stavanger boy Kjell Michelsen to himself. Then he turned his back on the office and city life, moved to Trodla-Tysdal, changed his name and called himself Kjell Tysdal, and became a sheep farmer and tourist host. The wife was persuaded to join, they had two girls, and everyone is settling in well. Oddgeir Bruaset has visited the family who live on the most remote farm still in operation in Rogaland.