Geo Norvegica Geopark

Gea Norvegica Geopark is Scandinavia's first UNESCO certified geopark. The geopark is located in the Vestfold and Telemark county, and is including municipalities of Bamble, Kragerø, Lardal, Larvik, Nome, Porsgrunn, Siljan and Skien.

Kragerø

Kragerø has a fantastic coastal landscape, with many islands, and smooth, rounded knolls of bedrock. The bedrock was deposited over billion years ago. Since then, it has been re-shaped by many ice ages to give the smoothed, rounded coastal landscape we see today.
Outermost in the Kragerø coastal landscape lies Jomfruland protecting against the waves from Skagerrak. In the same way as Mølen in Larvik, Jomfruland is part of the extensive end-moraine that runs along the whole of southern Scandinavia known as the Ra-moraine. Amongst other things, Jomfruland is known for its cobblestones on the outer side, its fine sandy beaches on the other inside, its divers birdlife, cultural landscape, wild anemones in the spring, and the protected landscape area with fantastic oak forests. 

Photo: Haakon Sundbø

Jomfruland National Park

Jomfruland National Park was established on 16 December 2016 and covers an area of 117 km2(45 sq mi), including the islands of Jomfruland and Stråholmen. About 98% in the park area is sea. For more information please watch this interesting film! 

The extensive ice sheet that covered the whole of Scandinavia under the last Ice Age is responsible for the lovely smooth and polished rock faces along the coast. At several localities such as Stangnes farthest south in Kragerø, one can see carved stripes where the ice sheets ground over and gauged out the bedrock with stones that frozen solid in its base.
At Stangnes one can also muse over som of the oldest bedrock in the Geopark. The gneisses here were partly melted and kneaded like dough through several mountain building events, as seen in the fine pattern of intrusions and veins through the smooth rocky islands along the coast.

Photo: Eva-Christina Skaarup