Cluster farm

A cluster farm (Norwegian: klyngetun) is a traditional western Norwegian farm settlement with multiple individual farms and with the houses of the various farms located close together, more or less irregularly in relation to one another, and so that it is difficult to see any regular pattern.

Typical examples of cluster farms include Havrå on the island of Osterøy, Agatunet in the Hardanger district, Henjum in Hermansverk, Tyssedalen in Fjaler Municipality, Osmundnes in Gloppen Municipality, Sjønstå in Fauske Municipality, and remaining parts of Larsbakken in Fjaler Municipality.

Cluster farms originated through repeated division of farms. The division was to be made fairly and so every single field plot was therefore divided. The plots of land therefore became increasingly smaller, and each user received an increasingly complex property to deal with.

Before the replacement in 1898, Lotunet on the farm Loen in the village of Loen was a cluster farm with 99 buildings belonging to 14 farms. Loen Church stood in the middle of the farm. Later, most of the buildings have been moved out of the farm and there are a couple of farms with buildings on either side of the church.  On the farm Langlo in Stranda there was a complicated cluster farm until the end of the 19th century. On the farm Hjølmo in Hjølmodalen (Eidfjord) there is a cluster farm with 7 farms. 

The cluster farms arose through repeated division of land. The division was to be fair, and each individual plot of land was therefore divided. The plots therefore became smaller and smaller, and the individual user had an increasingly complicated property to deal with. The division of land and the dense settlement meant that much work, such as fencing, supervision and spring weeding, had to be done jointly. The inland fields were typically located around the cluster farm. 

Most cluster farms were dissolved in the 19th and 20th centuries in connection with the great replacement of inland fields from 1860 to 1910, including some cluster farms on Vest-Lista. The replacement meant that each farm was able to gather its land into a more continuous area. This led to the agricultural landscape in Western Norway becoming more like that in Eastern Norway, where each farm remained on its own with its own yard and its own land around it.   Previously, it was common to have one building for each purpose on the farm. Over time, the number of buildings was reduced by each building serving multiple purposes, which also contributed to the dissolution of the clustered yards. 

Agatunet was originally a large farm during the Middle Ages divided into an upper and lower yard. In the 17th century there were 3 users on Aga and in the 18th century there were 6 farms with a total of 54 people. At the census in 1865, 159 people lived on Agatunet and in 1907 there were 9 self-owned farmers and 16 householders. With 30 buildings, Agatunet forms a small village. Favorable location with regard to, among other things, the risk of landslides, flooding or a good harbor could also contribute to concentrated settlement. 

Eilert Sundt described the building customs in the countryside in the 1860s. Halvor Vreim made an overview of different farm types in Norway in the 1920s. Arne Berg did extensive research on farm buildings, illustrated with his own drawings and published in the work Norske gardstun (1968). Klyngetun is typical of the fjord areas in Western Norway from Lista in the south to Romsdal in the north (as well as Northern Norway), vikargintun for the flatland in Eastern Norway (as well as Trøndelag and Nordland) and rekkettun on the valley sides. Rekkettun is typical of Setesdal and Telemark (and also in the north of Western Norway and in Northern Norway), and often meant that outbuildings were in one row and residential houses in another row. In Northern Norway, sea farms were common and this meant that farmhouses and livestock houses were located slightly up from the sea and in connection with boathouses, piers and other things on the waterfront. 

The cluster farm is considered one of the oldest settlement forms in Norway.  In Romsdal, square farms, cluster farms and rekke farms occur, where square farms and small rekke farms were often the result of replacing cluster farms. In Rogaland, cluster farms were particularly common in Ryfylke. 

Sourced from Wikipedia