Hoddevik: the road down to a farmed valley
Compiled by Surf Haunts · Updated 2026-10-20
Hoddevik is the view from the road. You come over the mountain from Fure, and the road folds down the slope in tight switchbacks until the valley opens below: green fields, a few white houses, a pale beach and the open sea between steep mountain sides.
One of Norway's chosen landscapes
The old municipality of Selje, now part of Stad, writes in its cultural-heritage plan that much of the traditional cultural landscape in Hoddevika is still intact, and that in 2009 the Hoddevik–Liset area was chosen as one of the twenty most valuable cultural landscapes in Norway. A management plan for the valley followed in 2010; it describes the farms, the shared sandy beach, the dunes and the fields that are still worked. The plan also notes that the valley's old boathouses have been demolished, while the boat landings remain.
The name itself may once have been Hovdevik, from a word for a mountain or peak – a guess the heritage plan makes, not a certainty.
A surf beach between the mountains
Hoddevik's beach faces the open sea, and it has become one of Norway's established surf destinations. Visit Norway presents it as a surf beach on the Stad peninsula, framed by steep mountains and reached by that recognisable road. A University of Stavanger study of cold-water surfing in Norway records that the 2016 Norwegian Surf Championship was held here, with fifty active participants. Whether the waves are good on a given day depends on the weather; the tourism pages say so themselves.
The other Norwegian valley in our series, Unstad in Lofoten, lies far to the north, inside the Arctic Circle, and has a surf history that begins with two homemade boards in 1963. The two should not be confused: Stad is not Lofoten.
A lived landscape
It is tempting to describe Hoddevik as untouched. It isn't: people farm it, and the municipality's plans exist precisely to balance surf visitors with the heritage values of a working valley. That is the Hoddevik we painted – the road, the farms, the beach – rather than a wave.
Do you know the valley?
If your family farmed or fished in Hoddevik and you have photographs with a date, email us. We'd like to add local detail, and we'll ask before publishing anything and agree how to credit you.
Our Hoddevik print
Our Hoddevik print follows the pale road through three switchbacks to the valley floor, with four small houses for scale, a narrow cream beach and turquoise water between the mountain sides.
Compiled from public historical sources and fact-checked against them at the time of writing – not a first-hand or local account. Corrections and memories are welcome; we verify before publishing anything sent in.