Ena Kavara from Berge Junior High School has gathered information about Paulsens hotel: 


      English Lords and an American refrigerator
      When you drive through Lyngdal along route 43 you pass a row of white wooden houses  
     just after you have lost sight of the river. One of these was a guesthouse and hotel for
     many years. Right up to the 1970s the hotel took in guests from far and near. In the
     nineteenth century it was popular with English Lords and businessmen who wanted to try
     their luck fishing in the Lygna. Situated by the road, with salmon-fishing rights and the river
     flowing just a few metres from the house, the hotel’s location was perfect.

    
     Photograph of one of the bedrooms

     At the beginning of the 1920s it became a hotel. The people running it had eight children,  
     and when the father of the household had an accident and died it was difficult to make   
     enough money to provide for the large family. Two of the sisters decided to go to 
     America to earn money. They got jobs as housemaids with some very rich families in
     the USA – people they had come into contact with through the guesthouse. During the years
     the two sisters sent money and other things home to the family in Lyngdal. When the
     millionaires replaced furniture and other equipment the sisters took the items over and
     instead of the things ending up on the garbage heap they were sent across the Atlantic. So
     the rooms at Paulsens hotel are full of American beds, bedside tables, lamps and other
     furniture. Even though the house has long since closed as a hotel, most of the rooms are
     exactly the same as they were some decades ago.

The parlor with its American items

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