Grjotvin

Grjotvin kvilestad

Anders Skåsheim (1880–1965) bequeathed this place as a resting place for the general public. He called it Grjotvin kvilestad in the testamentary gift. He used the Old Norse word ‘grjot’, which means stone, and combined it with ‘vin’, which means grassy plain. This new, contrived name thus means a grassy plain full of stones.

Anders Skåsheim was born and brought up in Balestrand, and his active life made an impact at the local, national and international level. He studied accounting, economics and marketing in Oslo. He went on to work in Bergen at Bergen Notforretning, Landsbanken and Vestlandsbanken, respectively.

He collected a great deal of local historical documents and artefacts from Balestrand and other communities in Sogn, and left a rich and valuable archive. He was also co-founder of Balestrand Sogelag, one of the driving forces behind Sogn Folk Museum and the formation of the history association, Historielaget for Sogn.

Skåsheim was passionate about the Nynorsk language, and he played a key role in the foundation of the associations Vestmannalaget in Bergen and Sogn Mållag.

His gaze was also turned beyond Norway, and he was a fervent advocate of Norse collaboration. He was one of the driving forces behind the statues of Snorre being erected at Reykholt in Iceland and in Bergen.

He was also one of the main proponents for erecting a statue of Ingolf Arnarson in Rivedal in Askvoll. Ingolf founded the first settlement in Iceland, and a statue of him was erected in Reykjavik in 1907. A copy of this statue was erected in Rivedal, where Ingolf came from, in 1961.

Skåsheim was awarded the Icelandic Grand Knight’s Cross for his work on strengthening the bonds between Iceland and Norway. In 1950, he was awarded His Majesty’s Gold Medal for his lifelong career of collecting and communicating Norwegian cultural heritage.

Education

Anders Skåsheim was born in 1880, the second oldest in a large family. His parents Christen and Synneva had nine children, two of whom died before the age of two, while the other seven survived childhood.

After completing lower secondary school, he moved to Oslo to attend the commercial school Treiders Handelsskule. It was a leading college in accounting, economics and marketing in its day. The school’s premises were in Nedre Vollgate.

Work

He subsequently got a job in Bergen Notforretning, a firm that sold all kinds of fishing equipment. He was a commercial traveller, which took him on many trips along the coast. Anders then got a job as office manager of Norges Bank in Hammerfest, and was there from 1921 to 1922. In 1926, the bank Vestlandsbanken was established on the same grounds as Landsbanken. Anders was involved from the very start, first as secretary, then as office manager and for many years as assistant or deputy manager of Vestlandsbanken, which was his employer until he retired in 1950.

The Nynorsk language

Skåsheim was passionate about the Nynorsk language. When Vestmannalaget, a language association in Bergen, took the initiative to establish the bank Landsbanken, which used Nynorsk, in Bergen in 1914, Anders was involved as secretary from the very start. Anders played a key role in Vestmannalaget during all the years he spent in Bergen, and was appointed honorary member. Anders was also involved in the foundation of the language association Sogn Mållag and was its first chairman. He was also appointed an honorary member of this association.