Ågerøya is an island in the middle of the

Blindleia Blindleia is an long inland waterway in the municipality of Lillesand in Agder county, Norway. The strait starts in the ''Gamle Hellesund'' or ''Ulvøysund'' areas in southern Høvåg in the southwest (near Kristiansand) and it continues north ...

strait in

Lillesand Municipality Lillesand () is List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Districts of Norway, traditional district of Southern Norway, Sørlandet. The administrative center of the municipality ...

Agder Agder is a counties of Norway, county () and districts of Norway, traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Au ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The island is located off Kjøpmannsvik, between the islands of Justøy to the east and Furøya to the west. Ågerøya attracts many summer tourists, and the population multiplies during the summer months. The island is car-free.

History

The island is first mentioned in two letters from 1467 in the

Diplomatarium Norvegicum ''Diplomatarium Norvegicum'' is a series of books containing the texts of documents and letters from Norway older than 1590, verbatim and in the original language. The series consists of 22 volumes, containing the texts of approximately 20,000 docum ...

, when it, along with Kalvøya and Sandøya, was sold by Herleik Kolbjørnsson to Lord Alv Knutsson of the Norwegian-Swedish noble family Tre Roser. Later (after 1678), it belonged to the Gyldenløve Family and the County of

Jarlsberg Jarlsberg was a former countship that forms a part of today's Vestfold county in Norway. The name translates as "Earl's Hill". The former countships of Jarlsberg and Larvik were merged into a county in 1821. Jarlsberg and Larvik's County (''Jarl ...

. Ågerøya was an important island during the age of sail, with its own school, library, two shops, a navigation school, shoemaker, and several shipping companies. It was established around 1800 and developed rapidly throughout the 19th century with ships sailing to Denmark and other foreign destinations. Ågerøya had a post office (postal code 4782) from 1890 to 1978. The island's outer harbor is called ''Stranda'' or ''Ågerøyhavn'' and it was the main population centre of the island during the sailing era. The island's heyday was at the end of the 19th century when nearly 400 people lived there. Today, around 40 people reside on the island. Fishing was the main livelihood for the residents of Ågerøya from the 1930s until the 1980s. The island gradually became depopulated during this period as life in the cities (

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality is the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 116,000 as of January 2020, following th ...

and

Lillesand Lillesand () is municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Sørlandet. The administrative center of the municipality is the town of Lillesand. Some of the larger villages in Lillesand municipality include ...

) offered more job opportunities. The school was closed in the 1950s. In the 1980s, several people with connections to the island moved away, primarily to work on the mainland, mainly in

and

. For a long time, Ågerøya was the only island in

with a permanent population that did not have a bridge connecting it tot he mainland. The discussion about the obligation to reside resurfaced in the winter of 2010 when the ice set in, and residents had significant difficulties reaching the mainland (Kjøpmannsvik). In 2012, the residency requirement was lifted.

History

At the onset of the attack on Norway in 1940, the German vessel 'Rio de Janeiro' was torpedoed off Ågerøya on 8 April 1940, by the Polish submarine ORP 'Orzeł.

References

{{reflist Lillesand Islands of Agder Car-free islands of Europe