Norway is supposedly the land of epic fjords and dramatic mountains with scenery that will impress around every corner—or at least that’s what the rather successful marketing campaigns will lead you to believe.
While already in Germany for a special family event, we had two weeks to spare and decided to head to Norway for a ferry trip down the coast as well as squishing in a short road trip. Admittedly, we did very, very little research in the lead-up being preoccupied with other matters, and so flew to Norway knowing almost nothing beyond that there are fjords, viking history and it’s increasingly popular, if not overtouristed.
So, to be upfront: I enjoyed Norway much more than the husband did but neither of us fell in love with it or are in a hurry to return. We expected it to be a mix of Canada and New Zealand but, of course, Norway is its own thing.
In hindsight, it feels a bit like choosing the most expensive country in Europe to visit (or perhaps that’s Iceland?), spending a fortune on a 2-week trip expecting amazing scenery but then skirting just past the incredible payoff that could have been.
Our highlights and disappointments are obviously a reflection of the trip we chose to undertake: A coastal ferry trip with Havila from Kirkenes in the far north of the country to Bergen in southern Norway.
We interrupted the ferry trip by disembarking in Tromsø (after spending a day and a half on the first ship), rented a campervan for an 8-day road trip, and then jumped back on the next ship to take us all the way to Bergen.
TOP 5 IN (COASTAL & ARCTIC) NORWAY
Despite feeling not so enthusiastic about Norway, we still had some highlights along the way. I’ve narrowed it down to our top 5 but there are a few others, including wandering the streets of historic Trondheim, lounging in the spa baths on the ferry that no one else seemed to want to enjoy, or soaking up the complimentary warmth in every public toilet (who knew energy could be this cheap?!).
1. TROLLFJORDEN
We expected breathtaking, majestic fjords along Norway’s coastline and didn’t really get any of that—turns out they’re mostly further south and weren’t part of our itinerary. That’s what happens when you don’t do your research properly.
However, while we were sailing along the Lofoten coastline in the far north, our captain decided that the weather, though miserable, was actually calm enough to take the tight trip into the Trollfjorden, complete with troll brew and commemorative mug (for purchase, of course).
Trollfjorden is an extremely narrow dead-end fjord where the ship has to literally turn on its own axis to manoeuvre out. With the clouds hanging low, the fjord had a moody feel to it and the ship navigating its precise way out was equally as impressive.
We spent a good hour in the pouring rain watching the ship silently glide in—thanks to Havila operating electric vessels—and turn around with nothing but the sounds of the breeze, the rain and the distant waterfalls.
2. ANDØYA SPACEPORT
Due to not doing any research, we discovered that Norway has its very own space station in the far north on Andøya Island only once we got there. As usual, we had no plan—dare I say, no clue?—and dutifully drove past the Spaceship Aurora visitor centre only to realise later that we could have visited it if we’d just been more organised.
Instead, we ‘discovered’ the actual spaceport a few kilometres down the Andøya Scenic Route.
The husband reverted to childhood once he realised an actual rocket was getting ready for launch—low and behold, the very next day. Sadly, the weather was so poor that the launch was delayed by a few hours, by which time we’d already moved on. Still, driving past a real-live rocket launchpad was pretty cool and not something we’ve ever done before.
3. AUTUMN COLOURS
I had really been looking forward to seeing autumn colours in Norway, hoping for something akin to what we’ve experienced on our travels in the Yukon in Canada years ago.
The misty, rainy weather, however, meant that we didn’t see as much of the autumn beauty as we’d hoped. As a result, we didn’t do much hiking but on the few hikes we did take, the autumn colours were indeed gorgeous.
By early September, the leaves were starting to turn and the ground cover high up in the Arctic was exploding into gorgeous red carpets.
4. NORWEGIAN CUISINE
Based on the cuisine, I could easily move to Norway—the food is right up my alley (well, minus the tomato sauce on fried eggs that I frequently observed at breakfast time).
From fresh fish, moose burgers, liver paté to far too delicious yoghurts (terrible given my weakness for dairy and trouble digesting it) and ‘brown cheese’ (it’s goat and not for everyone, including the husband), I loved it all. To top it off, we had great fun exploring the different supermarket chains and trying to figure out what on earth we were buying. 🙂
On our Havila ferry cruises we didn’t need to self-cater but instead enjoyed excellent food that would have cost a fortune at a restaurant. The team was fantastic at catering for my gluten-free needs (I only got a bit tired of the bread by the end), and their rotating menus showed off local Norwegian cuisine and ingredients from various regions and port stops along the way. Such a great way to try out different dishes and food you’d otherwise never eat.
5. NORWAY’S TUNNELS
If Norway knows how to do one thing (well, there’s more than one thing), it’s how to build bridges and tunnels. They are seriously next level, and the rest of the world could learn a thing or two here.
Norway has a gazillion small islands dotted along its coastline and it has connected many of these via bridges or even subsea tunnels. Not only that, where others build roads on the side of mountains, Norway just builds a tunnel through it.
Now that doesn’t sound that amazing but have you ever driven through an underwater tunnel that’s 6km long?! The Sørdal Tunnel on the Lofoten archipelago takes you 142m below sea level over its 6.34km distance—I was getting seriously claustrophobic about half-way through. While I’m in awe of this civil engineering feat, it also freaks me out to be that far below the sea (i.e. underwater) zooming through a kilometres-long tunnel.
(And by the way, that’s not even Norway’s longest subsea tunnel—the Ryfylke Tunnel comes in at a staggering 14.4km and plunges you down to 292m. What’s more, they’re building a tunnel for ships to go through, yes, for ships. The Stad Ship Tunnel will cut through a peninsula to allow vessels to bypass a notorious stretch of windswept, open sea—isn’t that coconuts?! They are clearly extremely good at building tunnels. And sorry for extended detour here, I’m just so impressed.)
FLOPS
And then there were the flops, of which there were many but I’m restricting myself to five as usual. Norway just didn’t quite hit it for us, and I’m still a bit puzzled over it. On paper, it seems the perfect destination for us: Plenty of nature, hikes, road trips, wildlife, food that works for me, history and so forth.
But somehow this trip didn’t quite come together in the way other road trips have. Perhaps it was simply our lack of planning—it’s not that we didn’t do any planning, we did but we only organised the skeleton of the trip (flights, ferries, hotels and the campervan) and left the details mostly to be discovered in Norway.
1. NORWEGIAN COFFEE
I don’t drink much coffee so this didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did the husband who has at least two coffees a day. In a nutshell, Norway doesn’t do coffee, or rather it doesn’t know how to do coffee.
It serves a brown liquid that’s more akin to dirty dishwashing water than it is to a freshly brewed, or even freeze dried, cup of coffee. We thought the coffee in Canada was bad but in Norway it felt completely undrinkable.
So when you’re used to high quality Australian coffee, in Norway it feels like you jump off a cliff only to be met with a brown puddle that cannot call itself even vaguely coffee. Enough said.
2. THE MISERABLE WEATHER
The weather was definitely a massive factor on our Norwegian trip. We were prepared for rain in terms of clothing but we weren’t prepared for so much of it and it being accompanied by very low-hanging clouds, often completely obscuring views.
Out of 16 days, we had three days of sunshine, two or three days of partly or mostly cloudy conditions, with the rest being extremely overcast, foggy and drizzly. Uninspiring to say the least.
It was atmospheric at times but atmospheric can only excite you for so long. When you can’t really see the scenic road you’re driving or the apparently stunning peaky mountains, fjords or views, it soon becomes a bit tedious and depressing.
3. THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE
As I said above, we expected massive fjords and towering mountain ranges along the coast of Norway (Kirkenes to Bergen) like we’d experienced on the Inside Passage in Canada. Turns out Norway’s coastline is just not like that—it’s a much flatter, compressed coastal scenery.
And it’s not that there aren’t any rugged peaks—sailing through the Lofoten Islands, even in abysmal weather, was impressive, but it’s only a few hours on a six-day journey.
We were also surprised by how populated the Norwegian coast is. It just goes to show that we obviously brought our own assumptions about what the coast above the Arctic Circle would be like—think low-population density, limited infrastructure and tiny villages, just like in Canada or Alaska. We naively thought we’d get a sense of remoteness, at least in the far north—but that never eventuated given how busy and accessible the coast is.
We enjoyed the Havila ferry cruises, but would we do it again? No. The scenery just lacks scale and ends up being underwhelming. Would we jump on ferries across the Inside Passage again? In a heartbeat. There’s so much to see that you willingly subject yourself to icy winds and frosty conditions for hours on end.
4. THE CAMPERVAN
Over the years, we’ve rented a fair few campervans in various countries, and harbour fond memories for a few of them. Without a doubt, our Arctic Camper rental will not be one of them.
It wasn’t so much the company (reasonable customer service) or the cost (exorbitant for what it was) but the actual van. A cheap fit-out, an impractical layout and basically no storage. On top of that, there was no grey water tank so the grey water went straight down a pipe spilling out wherever you happen to be parked when you ran the tap. To top it all off, the van had a great big ‘leave no trace’ sticker on the back door.
I am not impressed.
5. SERVICE STATION HOT DOGS
We’re always game for trying food in other places, and generally the experiments work out (well, maybe not the fake cream buns in New Zealand or pork knuckle in Germany). Oftentimes it’s the husband who has to suffer the ordeal since the food experiment is frequently not gluten-free.
Turns out that the hot dogs (pølser) at service stations in Norway, apparently bordering on cult status, aren’t as delicious as they’re made out to be. A hot dog is perhaps not the wisest food choice to start with but coupled with a fuel station? Yeah nah, really not good, no matter what blog articles and the interwebs might say.
The hot dog from Circle K was so bad that the husband ate maybe two bites before throwing the whole thing in the bin—and he’s not known for wasting a scrap of food.
(I convinced him to try again in Tromsø—not at a fuel station, mind you—where the choice fell on a reindeer + beef hot dog. The result was entirely palatable so all is not lost for Norwegian hot dogs.)
WRAPPING UP
Two weeks isn’t a long time to explore a country as large as Norway but it gave us a taste.
We did enjoy our Havila ferry cruise along the classic coastal route, stopping at the various ports at all hours and being able to disembark for short strolls around small, and not so small, towns. Our road trip around the islands near Tromsø, including the very hurried drive down the Lofoten archipelago, wasn’t the best—the weather was abysmal and even in early September, it was still just too busy for us. Perhaps we simply chose the wrong region and would have loved the mountain ranges east of Tromsø or the southern fjords far more.
But it’s unlikely we’ll return soon—I simply crave wide, open spaces too much and more sun, something I never thought I would say.
No Comments