Travel and Tourism in Norway

The Lofoten Islands

The Lofoten Islands are, by the consensus of photographers, travel writers, and ordinary visitors alike, one of the most beautiful places in the world. This chain of islands above the Arctic Circle, extending for roughly 160 kilometers off the northwest coast of Norway, presents a landscape of such visual drama that it is difficult to believe without seeing: jagged peaks of bare granite and quartzite rising abruptly from a sea of extraordinary color, the mountains reflected in sheltered lagoons of turquoise and green, clusters of red and yellow fishing cabins perched on rocks at the water's edge, and above it all, depending on the season, either the perpetual summer daylight of the midnight sun or the aurora borealis arcing across a dark winter sky.

The islands have been inhabited for at least a thousand years. Their waters are extraordinarily productive, warmed by the Gulf Stream and rich in fish, and the cod fishery that has operated in these waters since medieval times was one of the most important fisheries in the world. Each winter, from January through April, enormous schools of Arctic cod migrate from the Barents Sea to the waters around Lofoten to spawn, and for centuries fishermen from all over northern Norway converged on the islands to take part in what was the largest seasonal fishery in Europe. The fish were dried on wooden racks called hjells in the cold, wind-dried air of a Lofoten winter to produce stockfish, which kept for months or years without refrigeration and could be transported to markets in Bergen and from there to the rest of Europe. Stockfish was the primary trade commodity of medieval Norway and the foundation of Bergen's Hanseatic commercial empire.

The fishing cabins, called rorbuer, that the fishermen lived in during the fishing season have been converted into accommodation for tourists and are one of the most distinctive and sought-after places to stay in Norway. The traditional rorbu is a small wooden building raised on stilts above the water, with a living area and sleeping quarters accessed by an external staircase. Modern rorbuer have been updated with comfortable furnishings, electric heating, and full kitchen facilities, but the essential character of the traditional fishing cabin is preserved, and staying in a rorbu on the Lofoten waterfront, waking to the sound of seabirds and the sight of the mountains reflected in the still water of the harbor, is an experience of remarkable intensity.

Reine, a village on the island of Moskenesøya at the southwestern tip of the archipelago, is regularly cited in surveys of travel professionals and photographers as one of the most beautiful villages in Norway, and the photographs that have been taken of its setting have been reproduced so widely that the place has achieved a kind of iconic visual status. The village sits on small islands connected by bridges, with the dramatic peaks of the Reinebringen mountain rising behind it and the Reinefjord stretching away in front. The combination of human scale and geological drama is characteristic of the Lofoten at its best.

Henningsvær, on the island of Austvågøya, is a fishing village perched on a cluster of small islands connected by narrow bridges, best known for a football pitch that occupies virtually an entire island, surrounded on three sides by water and with the mountains rising behind. The pitch, used by the local team Henningsvær IF, has become one of the most photographed sporting venues in the world, a surreal juxtaposition of the mundane and the spectacular. The village itself is charming, with a good range of galleries, restaurants, and accommodation, and it serves as a base for kayaking and hiking expeditions into the surrounding landscape.

Norway's UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Norway has eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites, each of which preserves an aspect of the country's extraordinary natural and cultural heritage.

The Urnes Stave Church, inscribed in 1979, is the oldest surviving stave church in Norway and one of the finest examples of Norse architectural and decorative art.

The Bryggen Wharf in Bergen, inscribed in 1979, preserves the layout and architectural tradition of the medieval Hanseatic trading post that dominated Norwegian commerce for three centuries.

The Rock Art of Alta in Finnmark, inscribed in 1985, includes over 6,000 carvings and paintings from approximately 4,200 to 500 BCE, providing a window into the spiritual and practical world of prehistoric Arctic peoples.

The Vegaøyan Archipelago, inscribed in 2004, reflects a fishing and eider-down collecting culture that has been practiced on these small islands since the Viking Age, representing a sustainable interaction between human society and the natural environment of the Norwegian coast.

The West Norwegian Fjords, comprising both the Geirangerfjord and the Nærøyfjord, inscribed in 2005, represent the finest examples of fjord landscape in the world.

Svalbard, or more precisely the complex of national parks and nature reserves that covers approximately 65 percent of the Svalbard archipelago, inscribed in 2004, protects one of the best-preserved High Arctic ecosystems remaining on earth.

The Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site in Telemark, inscribed in 2015, preserves the infrastructure of the early twentieth-century hydroelectric industrial complex that was the site of the crucial Norwegian resistance sabotage operation against the German heavy water program during the Second World War.

The Røros Mining Town and Circumference, inscribed in 1980 and extended in 2010, preserves a remarkably complete mining town that operated from 1644 until 1977, with a collection of wooden buildings that represent one of the finest surviving examples of a Scandinavian mining community.

Major Norwegian Cities in Detail

Norway's urban landscape is dominated by a small number of cities of distinct character, each offering a different lens through which to understand the country. Beyond Oslo and Bergen, which have been treated at length, the cities of Trondheim, Stavanger, and Tromsø each deserve sustained attention from the traveler.

Trondheim, situated at the mouth of the Nidelva river where it meets the Trondheimsfjord, is Norway's third city by population and its historical religious capital. Founded in 997 CE by the Viking king Olav Tryggvason, who is said to have thrown his friend's sword into the river to determine where the city should be built, Trondheim served as Norway's capital during the medieval period and retains from that era its greatest architectural monument: the Nidaros Cathedral, built over the tomb of Saint Olaf and the grandest medieval building in Scandinavia. The cathedral, whose construction began in the eleventh century and continued through the medieval period, is the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world and the coronation church of Norwegian monarchs. Its western facade, restored in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is covered with hundreds of carved stone figures representing saints, angels, and biblical scenes, a program of religious instruction in stone that took decades to complete. The interior of the cathedral is dark and atmospheric, with a Gothic choir of extraordinary quality and the famous rose window in the north transept, whose colored glass casts patterns of light across the stone floor on sunny days.

Trondheim's old town quarter, centered on Kjøpmanns Street and the old wooden buildings along the Nidelva river, preserves much of the character of a Norwegian provincial city from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The colorful wooden storehouses, called brygger, that line the river are smaller and more intimate than Bergen's Bryggen but share the same tradition of vernacular wooden architecture that characterizes the commercial waterfronts of Norwegian coastal cities. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, founded in 1910 and now one of the largest universities in Norway, gives the city a youthful energy and a significant cultural infrastructure including the Ringve Music Museum, which houses one of Norway's finest collections of historical musical instruments.

Stavanger, on the southwestern coast of Norway, is a city whose entire modern character has been shaped by the discovery of oil in the North Sea. Before 1969 it was a pleasant but unremarkable regional center with a history rooted in fishing and canning. The Ekofisk oil field discovery transformed it into the center of Norway's offshore petroleum industry, and the city today hosts the headquarters of Equinor, formerly Statoil, as well as dozens of international oil and gas companies. The wealth generated by the oil industry has given Stavanger some of the highest property prices and restaurant costs in Norway, remarkable in a country where prices are already elevated by global standards.

Beneath the oil industry veneer, however, Stavanger is a city of considerable historical interest and charm. Its old quarter, Gamle Stavanger, preserves one of the finest collections of eighteenth and early nineteenth century wooden domestic architecture in Norway: over 170 white-painted wooden houses climbing the hillside above the harbor, their window boxes in summer filled with flowers, their cobblestone streets largely traffic-free. The Stavanger Cathedral, the oldest in Norway still in regular use, dates from approximately 1125 CE and is a fine example of Romanesque architecture in the Norwegian tradition. The Norwegian Petroleum Museum, situated at the harbor, provides an excellent and remarkably honest account of the discovery and development of North Sea oil, including its environmental implications and the debates over Norway's management of its petroleum wealth.

The Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, accessible by a two-hour hike from a trailhead southeast of Stavanger, is one of the most photographed landscapes in Norway. A flat-topped cliff of granite that rises 604 meters directly above the Lysefjord, Preikestolen provides a view down the length of the fjord that is genuinely vertiginous: the cliff edge is almost perfectly sheer, and the sensation of standing on the flat top and looking down into the dark water hundreds of meters below is one of the most dramatic experiences available in Norwegian nature. The hike to the top and back takes approximately four hours for a reasonably fit person and is manageable without special equipment in summer conditions. The trail is heavily used in the peak summer months, and early morning starts are advisable to avoid the crowds that can make the cliff top unpleasantly congested at midday.

A short distance from Preikestolen, the Kjerag boulder is one of the most dramatic natural curiosities in Norway: a large boulder wedged between two rock faces over the Lysefjord, accessible by a challenging hike that involves some hand-and-foot scrambling over steep rock. Standing on the Kjerag boulder, balanced between the rock faces with the void of the fjord 984 meters below, has become one of the quintessential Norwegian adventure photographs. The hike is more demanding than the Preikestolen trail and should only be attempted by those with appropriate physical fitness and footwear.