Fjords Galore in Western Norway

So after our trip to the High Arctic we headed back to mainland Norway, to the town of Tromso. From there we caught a Hurtigruten boat to take us down the coast to Bergen.

The Hurtigruten ships started out as mail delivery ships a bit over 100 years ago, sailing up and down the Norwegian coast. Nowadays they’re more toned-down cruise ship than working ship, though they still deliver supplies and function as a passenger ferry.

They’re a good way to watch the fantastic scenery go by and you can jump out and check out the small towns that you stop at along the way.

The boat definitely has a cruise-ship feel to it as the average passenger age is probably 60 (median is 70), but that did mean that people didn’t hang around on deck for too long in the wind so we got to have it mostly to ourselves. They also have excursions like you have on cruise ships but since this is crazy-expensive Norway we decided not to go on them, we didn’t even have lunch or dinner and just ate all our day’s food at the free breakfast.

After we got to Bergen we went on another scenic boat trip (this time just a day trip). We thought we’d seen the highlights of the fjord scenery (Lofoten Islands and Trollfjord) already on the Hurtigruten boat but the area around Bergen is just as dramatic. It seems like everywhere you go on the west coast are huge mountains shooting straight up out of the sea, with waterfalls cascading down from the top.

The Flam Railway is also a good option for spectacular mountain scenery. We didn’t have the time but taking the train to the top of the mountains then riding a bike back down to Flam looks like a great way to enjoy the scenery.

One of the most memorable things we’ve done was to go on a glacier hike. The Folgefonna Glacier is at about 1500m above sea level and has a summer ski resort on top of it. In the winter the snow completely buries all the buildings and chairlift so they can only operate in the summer. They have to dig out the facilities from the snow each spring. Because the glacier is always moving they have to move the chairlift supports every 2-3 years to realign them.

The brochure described our trip as “glacier walking” which didn’t sound too difficult. When we got there it turned out to be much more of an adventure. There was actual scrambling up and down steep rocky terrain just to get to the glacier, and once we got to the blue ice it was proper glacier trekking with crampons, ice axes (I had way too much fun smashing the ice with it) and ropes tied around each other. And it was very important that we stayed as far apart as possible in case someone fell into a hidden crevasse. And to top it all off there were high winds trying to blow us over.

It was pretty awesome out on the glacier as we were able to peer down into the icy depths of the crevasses, in some of them we couldn’t even see the bottom. It’s not an activity if you’re scared of heights as quite a few times we had to jump over crevasses. But if you’re not scared of heights it’s lots of fun and it’s definitely worth it.

We’ll definitely have to come back to Norway again and really take advantage of all the great hiking and biking options (and hopefully not too much of the typically rainy Norwegian weather!).