Hvåle is in Nore, on the east side of Norefjorden, across the water from the church and the parsonage and near the old crossing at Noresundet. It's about four kilometers north of Kjøntveit. The clerks wrote it Waale and Vaale.
Lars
Lars Halvorsen was born about 1652. He was the son of Helga Gulbrandsdotter of Hvammen: a court record of 1711 names him as hers. The farm history makes his father Halvor Anulfsen of Hvammen, which the records haven't confirmed yet.
Lars didn't come into the whole farm. His father died about the time of a land division in 1674, the farm history says, and Lars took Hvåle, but his mother kept her own share. In the land register of 1683, counted in skinn, the old measure of a farm's rent, Helga held eleven of Hvåle, the church six, and Lars seven. His mother owned more of it than he did. He contested the 1674 division in court in 1677. He also owned Kjøntveit from the 1670s, with another man working it.
In 1681 he became skysskaffar, the man responsible for finding horses and boats for officials traveling through: past the falls at Eid and up the fjord. If the horses weren't there, he could be fined. On top of that there were fights over boundaries and over fishing rights. Fish were worth going to court for.
The farm history's 1723 assessment gives Hvåle a horse and a half, ten cows, two heifers, two calves, sixteen sheep and sixteen goats, with barley, oats and rye. The half horse was the assessor's arithmetic, not the stable's.
Two marriages
Lars married Ragnild Poulsdatter before 1680. The farm history says she came from Østre Halland. They had Halvor, born about 1680, and Paul, about 1690. Ragnild died between 1690 and 1694, and her estate was divided on August 24, 1694. The court recorded it as Lars Waale and his wife, Ragnild.
He married again, before 1694: Gjertrud, Torsteinsdotter in the farm history and Tostensdatter in the estate. They had two daughters, Ragnhild and Helga, his mother's name.
In February 1723 Lars settled who got what among the children of the two marriages, the farm history says. Paul was farming Kjøntveit by then, and Halvor was at Vetterhus.
Lars died in 1732, at eighty, by the farm history's reckoning. The estate was opened at Hvåle on June 19. It names his first wife, Ragnild, and their son Halvor Larsen Vetterhuus, both dead, with Halvor's five children; Povel Larsen Kiøntved, who was there; and Ragnild and Helge, the daughters of the second marriage.
A storehouse at upper Hvåle dates from about 1705, and the author of the farm history thinks Lars built it. Whether it stands today hasn't been checked.
Who lived here
born or died at Hvåle · a pale bar is a life whose start isn’t recorded
Show them as a list, with what puts each of them here
- Lars Halvorsen –1732 · his estate opened at Hvåle, 1732 (probate register 3)
- Ragnild Poulsdatter – · the 1694 registration names “Lars Waale” and his wife, Ragnild (tingbok I 27)
The records
- 1696. The division of August 24, 1694, after Ragnild Poulsdatter, registered February 10, 1696. Tingbok I 27, folio 4b: the page.
- 1711. Helga's support case, July 17, naming "Lars Waale og Anulf Hwammen" as her children. Tingbok I 41, folios 39b–42a: the opening.
- 1732. Lars Halvorsen's estate at Hvåle, June 19. Probate register 3, folios 249b–251a: the opening, the heirs.
The farm history: T. K. Loftsgard, Nore–Uvdal i forn og nye, part 1, vol. 3, pp. 1077 and 1082–1087, at the National Library.