Utne is a village in Ullensvang

Ullensvang

Ullensvang is a municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Hardanger. The administrative centre is the village of Kinsarvik....

 municipality in Hardanger

Hardanger

Hardanger is a traditional district in the western part of Norway, dominated by the Hardangerfjord. It consists of the municipalities of Odda, Ullensvang, Eidfjord, Ulvik, Granvin, Kvam and Jondal, and is located inside the county of Hordaland....

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. It is home to the Utne Hotel, Norway's oldest hotel in continuous operation, founded in 1722.

Utne, in Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, probably has some pre-Germanic elements, i.e. before approx. 200 CE. Other place-names in the area also has an element of pre-Germanic and unknown origins. It has been suggested that it derives from "Ut-tun", meaning the hamlet or farmstead that is "out". This fits with the village's position at the tip of Sørfjorden

Sørfjorden, Hardanger

Sørfjorden is a 38 kilometre long fjord arm of the Hardangerfjord in Hordaland county, Norway. The longest arm of the Hardangerfjord, Sørfjorden stretches from north of Kinsarvik to the industrial town of Odda. The glacier of Folgefonna is located to its west, while the mountain plateau of...

. This is however uncertain.