V is for Voss in ABC Wednesday

Voss is a municipality not far for from Bergen - many would call it a small town. Wikipedia describes it like this:

Voss (help·info) is a municipality in Hordaland county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Voss. The administrative center of the municipality is the village of Vossevangen.

Voss was established as a municipality on January 1, 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). Vossestrand was separated from Voss on January 1, 1868 and Evanger was separated from Voss on January 1, 1885. All of Vossestrand and the main part of Evanger, were merged back into the municipality of Voss on January 1, 1964.

The main centre of population is the town Voss or Vossevangen. Voss is situated on the main road and railway line from Oslo to Bergen, about 100 kilometres east of Bergen. The people of Voss make their living mainly from agriculture and tourism, both in the summer and winter.

When you look at the snowcapped mountains in the distance you could be excused for thinking that you were now into the Norwegian "Highlands", but you are not. The picture above shows the station building, and it says clearly that you are now all of 57 metres above sea level. However, Voss has fostered a number of Olympic champions in the winter games and Voss was also for a number of years a training centre for winter warfare for NATO-troops.

The lake "Vangsvatnet" is in many ways the centre of Voss, with most of the town on one side and agricultural areas on the other.

The main church is called "Vangskyrkja" and is a stone church from 1277 with room for 550 people.

You may have noticed that I have mentioned winter sports several times, but only shown summer pictures. There is a very good reason for this: Voss arranges a festival called Ekstremsportsveko (The Extreme Sport Week) where anyone with a suicide complex can take part in a number of death-defying activities. A quote from their homepage should give an indication:

Ekstremsportveko is build upon the four elements; water, air, earth and fire. Kayaking, rafting, kiting, big air and freeride represent water. BASE, skydiving, paragliding and hanggliding represent air. Longboarding, climbing, MTB/BMX and multisport are based on the earth element, whereas the festival program is rooted in fire.

The pictures were taken this summer, but I stayed on the ground...

Today's post is part of the the third round of ABC Wednesday. The founder, Denise Nesbitt, has changed the rules to make the system more practical. There is now a no-comment blog where you can post a copy or short version of your post with a link-back to your original post for the full version and comments. Scanning through this no-comment blog will give you a Variety of Vs. She has also set up a site where you can log on via Mr. Linky if you want to do that. However, Mr. Linky has lately been somewhat uncooperative, so I do not know how it will be today.