Photo: Lars Åge Kamfjord·CC BY 2.5· Wikimedia Commons
Islands / Tønsberg / Husøy
Husøy is a working fishing village and residential community of around 930 people, with a church from 1933 and its own artificial turf pitch, Husøy Arena. One of the most densely populated fishing villages in the inner Vestfold archipelago.
Coming in through Husøysundet you see something unusual for the Vestfold archipelago: a whole small town on an islet, house against house, a white church and an artificial turf pitch squeezed in between the buildings and the sea. This is one of the few fishing villages on the Oslofjord with people living here all year. The bridge over Myrasundet to the west is what ties the island to the mainland.
road and bridge from Føynland (county road 430); also the passenger ferry Ole III across Husøysund from Husvik.
The island is connected by road, so you need neither a boat nor a timetable.
Husøy covers 0.9 km² in the outer Oslofjord, wedged between Føynland and Husvik. The name turns up on old sea charts from around the 1730s, spelled Huusoe. The island grew up as a fishing village, and the buildings stand closer together here than on the neighbouring land: people built where they could, near the sea and the boats.
Husøy church went up in 1933. The school on the island kept going until 2013, when it closed. At the census around 2001 some 930 people lived here, which makes Husøy one of the most densely settled points in the archipelago within Tønsberg.
Husøy is a lived-in place with households here through the whole year. County road 430 crosses the island with a bridge over Myrasundet to Føynland, so people drive to and from. Husøy og Føynland Idrettsforening runs the artificial turf pitch, Husøy Arena. The church from 1933 still stands. Since the school closed in 2013 the children travel to the mainland.
The island is reached by car over the bridge from Føynland (county road 430). A passenger ferry, Ole III, has run across Husøysund between the island and Tangen at Husvik. The regular service stopped on 31 December 2012 and started again on 3 July 2017. Check the current timetable locally before planning around it, and never quote departure times from memory. Husøy is a private residential community with homes and businesses; there is no coastal trail cabin (*kystledhytte*) and no public campsite here. No access bans or protected areas are known on the island itself.
Husøy is one of the few places on the whole Oslofjord where a fishing village still has permanent year-round residents; most of the others have turned into cabin settlements.
The bridge over Myrasundet made this a drivable island, but the buildings still carry the mark of the years when everything came and went by boat: the houses stand tight together and the streets are narrow.
An islet of under one square kilometre with both its own church and its own football pitch says something about how many people actually live here.
Oslo Sea Experience passes Husøy on its private fjord trips from Tjuvholmen.
The Norwegian version notes which facts were taken from each source: Husøy på norsk.