Runde Lighthouse – “the Seafarers to Help and Serve” through 250 years
By Harald Earl Runde
Runde lighthouse from 1767 with the "sub-lighthouse" at Valderhaug from 1772 can be considered the fourth oldest lighthouse station in Norway and the oldest north of Stad. Breisundet, where the city of Ålesund later came, was an important meeting place on the coast. Here, the founder Peter Friderich Koren received permission from the king to set up a "Bluss-Fyhr" at Runde and a "Søe-Lygt" at Valderhaug, both "for the benefit of sailors and for service". The book tells the story of "lighting" through 250 years, about shipping and shipwrecks, pilotage and pilotage, mapping and war, the Rundø customs district, fisheries and port development, telephone and weather forecasting services. And not least about life at the lighthouse station and those who lived and worked there – the last family moved from the lighthouse in 1956. Today's lighthouse at Kvalneset on the bird island of Runde is automated and unmanned, and is a tourist destination and a tourist cabin at the far end of the sea.
