At Bømlo Folkehøgskule, we have a few main guidelines for your own and your fellow students’ comfort and personal development. We expect each individual to take responsibility for her/his own actions. Most questions and problems are solved by dialogues amongst students and between students and the school's personnel. In this, the student union has an important role.

Some rules are, however, not negotiable: Alcohol and illegal drugs and are not allowed at the school. No one is allowed to be under the influence, or in possession of illegal drugs while at the school. Bømlo

Folkehøgskule is a totally drug-free zone. All course time, and designated group activities are compulsory. We have no exams in Bømlo Folkehøgskule – our goal is to guide you, not grade you.

Bømlo Folkehøgskule opened in 1983, and is thereby one of the most modern folkehøgskule in Norway. In the main building you will find a comfortable and bright dining hall, library, classrooms, living room with an open fireplace, a workshop, a gym, a theatre stage with room for 200 people in the audience, a pool room, a music room etc.

Furthermore the school has a boathouse in which you find a traditional Norwegian wooden sail/row boat, and six sea kayaks, hand made at Bømlo Folkehøgskule.

Students live in one of six wooden houses. Every house has an equipped kitchen and a laundry. There are six single rooms and three double rooms in each house. Each room has its own bathroom with a shower.

Students bring their own sheets, blankets, pillows, and a few kitchenettes such as cups. Due to allergies, no pets are allowed.

Bømlo Folkehøgskule is located at one of the many islands of the municipality of Bømlo. We are situated 2 km from the village Finnås, where you will find a small food store and a gas station. The town Svortland is the communal centre of Bømlo and is a 15 minutes drive from Bømlo Folkehøgskule.

First of all you pay 1.500 NOK in registration money. Tuition is free. Fees for meals and housing throughout the academic year (August to May) reach a total of NOK 56.000. This sum will be divided into 10 rates; 5 in the autumn term and 5 in the spring term. If yours is a single room there is an additional cost of NOK 5.000 per term.

Students who chose to drop out must, following normal folkehøgskule procedure, pay additional boarding fees corresponding to 6 weeks.

In the beginning of the year, each student also has to pay NOK 5.000,- for different expenses during the year, such as photocopying, excursions, use of washer and dryer, songbook etc.

The school trip to China will be about 14.000 NOK, but if you don`t want to go to China there is an alternative trip to Krakow in Poland. This trip will be about 6.000 NOK.

Each of our courses goes on a trip, here are the prices for them:

Peace and solidarity (Africa and Latin-America) and Outdoor life and environment (Nepal) will be about 22.000 NOK.

Psychology (Palestine) and Musical and theatre (New York) will be about 15.000 NOK.

Chef and food culture (Italy) will be about 10.000 NOK.

Do you want to “do something about it”!? To work with the most fundamental challenges of our time: development in the poor parts of the world, environmental challenges and ecology, and the relations between north and south? This is where you want to be! A central issue in the Peace&Solidarity course is communication and understanding when relating to “foreign” cultures.

In class you will learn more about international organisations, the different philosophies of development, political systems, international relations, and much more! Our method and our goal is this: Learning for understanding, and understanding for doing. The world today seems more complex than ever, we all share an international responsibility.

One group will be focusing on Latin-America, and one on Africa. In the autumn semester the groups plan and prepare for their month long class trip to each their region, the Latin-Americanists usually go to Central America and the Africanists go to Eastern Africa – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

All three groups will visit and work with a number of different projects – orphanages, schools, health centres and environmental projects. Some of the projects are led by Norwegian organisations whilst most of them are local project contacted by students.

Each year the students have much influence as to where you want to go, what kind of project you want to visit etc. We seek to meet people as equals and to spend time with and learn from everyone we meet. We hope to contribute to make the world a better place for the ones around us and the ones far away, and we know that they will improve ours.

The Chef and food culture course has a vital position in the everyday life at Bømlo Folkehøgskule, where the student meals play an important role for your common wellbeing. Two days a week you will make dinner for all the students in the school.

The food you will make at school will range from soups to the finest of steaks and traditional Norwegian meals. Your workplace is a professional kitchen.

One of the main projects in the first semester is the traditional and spectacular Christmas party, where there will be all sorts of traditional Christmas dishes. The guests invited are of course your fellow students, the teachers and all the Bømlo Folkehøgskule staff. We succeeded greatly last year and hope this year will be even better!

Throughout the year we will “travel the world kitchens”, that is we will make food from all the corners of the world. We try to make each meal better than the last and mostly we succeed. Your teacher will take you fishing, looking for mushrooms, fruits and berries, mussels and other delicacies from the seas and forests of Bømlo.

We seek to cook by the methods of “slow food”, and learn more about how to cook environmentally friendly.

MUSICAL & THEATRE:

OUTDOOR LIFE AND ENVIRONMENT:

“Outdoor life and environment” is our new course at Bømlo folkehøgskule.

With its thousand islands, Bømlo is a beautiful archipelago at the Western coast of Norway. Our aim is to open our eyes for everything that the magnificent nature of Bømlo can offer. You will expand your view on the nature nearby, and all the experiences it can offer. You will get a taste of nature; seafood, berries, mushrooms and game from the forest at Bømlo.

Bømlo will be our base camp; a perfect base for exciting and different experiences of outdoor life, both by foot, by bicycle and at sea. When going out at sea we will often be using “Storelyren,” our 32 feet traditional wooden rowing and sailing boat. Our main focus is the sea, kayaking and fishing, but we will also be doing scuba diving, abseiling, and exploring caves.

Another important focus of this course is how to use the nature without exhausting it. We will learn how human activities affect the environment, and try to find means to take care of nature for future generations.

You will have a good combination of individual and shared experiences. You will get to know yourself, and you will be challenged in communication and cooperation. If you want to experience the best of what the nature on the Western coast of Bømlo can offer, you are welcome to the course “Outdoor life and Environment” at Bømlo Folkehøgskule.

PSYCHOLOGY:

In this course you will be studying the human mind. You will gain knowledge about how we as human think and feel, and maybe why? The main focus will be positive psychology and social psychology. Among other things we will be looking at interactions between the individual and its social context, development of identity, tolerance, discrimination and conflict resolution.

In the autumn semester we will look at psychology in general; its history, different directions of the field and important people for the subject such as Freud. Questions we will be looking at are; In what extent do we use psychology today? What can a psychologist do in an emergency? In terms of this question we are going to Palestine for two weeks, and we will try to understand how it’s like to live under constant pressure and in a perpetual struggle. One of our goals is to try and understand the conflict from both sides, and try to understand what underlines the conflict in terms of psychology.

In the spring semester we will be working a lot on processing our journey. We will travel to other schools, sharing our experiences and what we learned. We will be in contact with organizations such as Leger uten grenser and Raftostiftelsen to learn how they use psychologists in their organizationes. But we will also use our own little society as a research arena. What happens to people with different backgrounds when you are living together for a year in a folkehøgskule?

At the end of our year you will be prepared for further studies in psychology. But if this is not your intension, and you have other plans, it will be an important tool for you in life anyway.