The mayor of Herøy despairs and the village team offers to bake cakes for NOK 100,000 to get the Coastal Agency to turn around.
The Norwegian Coastal Administration has decided to demolish several lighthouses along the coast. One of them is Gollenes lighthouse in Herøy municipality in Sunnmøre – in the village of Kvalsvik.
Now the village team and the municipality have joined forces to try to stop the demolition.
The municipality’s acting mayor, Bjarne Kvalsvik, has also taken up the fight for the lighthouse. He believes the lighthouse is almost a do-or-die for the village.
– This case is about identity, settlement and decentralisation. Now everything else has been removed, both the shop and the post office, and now we’re going to lose our lighthouse too?
The lighthouse is planned to be replaced by another, less maintenance-requiring lighthouse.
– It’s a plastic lamp that looks like a pencil. We don’t want that, we want our guy, says the mayor, who represents a cross-party list in the municipal council
He says that the village association has offered to collect NOK 100,000 for maintenance of the lighthouse, if it can change the Coastal Administration’s decision.
– The village can collect money by holding a bazaar, on Kvalsvikdagen and through cake sales. There are many hours of service behind such a sum, in a village with 150 inhabitants. And we are willing to do that. That’s how important the lighthouse is to us, he says.
Will maintain myself
Guttorm Tomren in the Coastal Agency politely declines the money the village offers.
– It’s nice, but we are a state agency and want to take responsibility for our own maintenance. At the large train stations where we have tenants, we sometimes collaborate with them on some of the maintenance. But here there is not much to rent out, he says.
Tomren is a senior adviser at the Norwegian Coastal Administration, with responsibility for navigation facilities along the entire coast.
– We maintain and renew lighthouses along the entire coast. Some lanterns are closed down because they are no longer needed. Others are flicked on, while others are torn down and replaced by new lanterns because there is still a need for a lantern there. This is how it is here, he says.
The reason why this particular lighthouse must be demolished is because the steel that is in the transition between the concrete supports and the building itself is in danger of rusting to pieces, he says.
– Then in the long term it will be more affordable to set up a new type of lantern.
Still out for consultation
He does not agree that the planned new lighthouse is uglier than the old one.
– That it resembles a pencil can be their opinion. It is hexagonal. But we have done a lot to make it look nice, and already have over 150 lighthouses of this type along the coast.
– The mayor says that the lighthouse is part of the village’s identity?
– Yes, he says so. There are many people who have objects in their immediate area that they associate with, be it nature or man-made things.
The Norwegian Coastal Administration must make a final decision on whether or not the lighthouse will stand by the end of February. According to the plan, as it is now, the lighthouse is to be replaced during 2023.
– We are happy that the local population is engaged in what we are working on. But we are primarily concerned with maritime safety and that our money goes the longest. So we have not yet decided what we are going to do, says Tomren.
