Bo Prestegard

About

The old parish in Bo is a cultural center today, run by a foundation. They arrange concerts and exhibitions. About the parish itself: a few hundred years ago, Holmen was the parish in Bo when the priests still ran the parish and the parish farm. Around 1900, this practice began to dwindle and slowly done away with, and today only the large yard and the main building, stabbur, and garden remain. The question was, what should happen to the farm? It was decided at a town meeting that it should not be sold to the highest bidder, but rather, should remain an important meeting place for people and for Bo. An agreement with the Opplysningsvesenets Fond was reached to buy the parish, and the foundation Bo Prestegard was established in 2006 as an important cultural preservation of the priest and parish farm history in Bo. The goal is to show how important the parish was as a meeting place and cultural arena of the time for both the people and the priest. The old name of the Bo Prestegard is Holmen, an old farm name, and the place is a little elevated above the rest of the Bo landscape. At the same level of the parish are the two churches in Bo—the old stone church from the middle ages and the newer wooden church from around 1870. There is a “priests’ path” going between the church and the parish, down into the valley and up onto the other side. This provides reason to believe that Holmen was a parish for quite a long time, probably since the middle ages. The parish was first mentioned in bishop Eystein Askalssons book from the 1390s (“Raudeboka”).