Fanitullvegen

Over the mountain between Hemsedal and Ål is a beautiful gravel road called Fanitullvegen. The road is a tollroad, so remember to bring cash.

The road is approx. 45 km long, and it is gravel from start to end. If you start in Hemsedal, you drive up alongside the alpine ski lift, and suddenly you are up in the high mountains. You pass small lakes, rivers, and shielings (sætre) under Reineskarvet.

Fanitullen

Fanitullen is the name of a famous Norwegian “slått”. A “Slått” is a musical piece played on a fiddle by hitting the bow onto the strings.
Fanitullen literally means “The Devil’s slått” and is about an old legend from the area. According to the story, two young men started a fight during a wedding. The farmer vent to the basement to get a bottle of beer to the winner, but in the basement he found the Devil sitting on a barrel playing fiddle. The man ran up, and found one of the young men murdered, and the other had fled. This was supposed to happen in Ål, but other variations of the legend says that it happened in Hemsedal.

Jørgen Mo found this story so interesting that he wrote the poem Fanitullen in 1840. The road at hand connects the two locations, Ål and Hemsedal, hence the appropriate name Fanitullvegen.