Reins Kloster

Kvithylla, Norway, Norway

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Reins Kloster in Kvithylla, Rissa municipality near Trondheim, Norway, is the country's northernmost medieval convent founded around 1226 by Duke Skule Bårdsson on his ancestral estate, likely as an Augustinian nunnery for noblewomen with his half-sister Sigrid Bårdsdatter as first abbess. Once larger than Nidaros Cathedral and a key religious-cultural center linked to royalty like Queen Margrete, it thrived until the 1537 Reformation when noblewoman Inger Ottesdatter Rømer secured its lands before Crown takeover, later passing to the Hornemann family in 1704 whose descendants built the current white manor with towers in 1866. Preserved ruins of its Greek cross church reveal early Gothic expansions over a possible pre-convent chapel, now an eco-farm, key pilgrim site, and tourist spot open year-round amid Bronze Age settlement traces overlooking Trondheim Fjord.