Folkestadbyen.The town of Folkestad

Folkestadbyen- The town of Folkestad. In the 1870s, a centre for commerce and crafts started to appear in this small church village.  The village received the name of “Folkestadbyen” and the towns people lived by paid work, commerce and handicraft. 

Folkestadbyen. The Town of Folkestad

It changed the farming community in Fyresdal and the number of residents of Folkestad Town increased rapidly. The "townspeople" made their living from wage work and trade and crafts. Folkestad rapidly became the district`s centre, with businesses, a bank and chapels.That a new type of society should emerge in Fyresdal in the sceond half of the 1800s is connected with what historians call the great tranformation during which the farms switched from a barter economy to a monetary economy, where the use of machines and mechanization changed the conditions of working life. These developments provided the basis for a new community that was not built soley around the cultivation of the soil

You can still feel the atmosphere from the "old days" if you take a walk up the Skippergata and down the Lensmannsgata, were most of the old buildings are the same as more than 100 years ago!
You will also find smaal cosy shops and during summer there are  concerts and other activities.