Vega is in a village and archipelago in Nordland. The Vega archipelago is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
World Heritage
The Vega archipelago — more than 6,500 islands, islets and skerries just south of the Arctic Circle — was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. It was listed not for its landscape alone but for the way people have lived from it: fishing, farming and, for some 1,500 years, gathering eiderdown.
The eider tradition
Islanders build small shelters for eider ducks, protect the nesting birds through the spring and, once the young have left, collect the down from the empty nests. Cleaning it is slow handwork; the result is among the lightest and warmest natural materials in the world. The tradition is still practised on a handful of the outer islands and is explained at the World Heritage centre at Nes.
Points of interest
Vega World Heritage Centre at Nes
The eider houses on the outer islands
Mt. Ravnfloget and the island's marked trails
Sandy beaches and birdlife along the coast
