(((Precede))) Norway has been news a lot recently thanks to their performance in the recent Football World Cup and the death of their monarch. It’s a nation we’ve heard about but what’s it really like to visit? Travel Today asked Nordic Visitor – a travel company with people on the ground in the region – for some inside knowledge.
Norway sits partly inside the Arctic Circle, which produces two extremes most Australians never experience firsthand: in Tromsø and the Lofoten Islands, the sun doesn’t set at all from mid-May to late July, and by November it disappears again until January, when the polar night takes over.
Football and a change on the throne have put Norway in Australian headlines this year, but neither says much about what the country is actually like to visit.
Norway has one of the lowest population densities in Europe, so the wilderness starts just outside almost every town.
Two of the country’s best-known fjords, Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord, wind between mountains that glaciers carved out over thousands of years.
The Lofoten archipelago, further north, stretches just 110 kilometres from end to end, yet still fits in fishing villages and eagle safaris within a few days’ drive.
Reaching it from Oslo means flying roughly 1,300 kilometres further north, well past the Arctic Circle.
Elin Lilja Öqvist, a Nordic Visitor Travel Consultant who has lived in both Oslo and Northern Norway, says that scale is what strikes most first-time visitors.
“The first time I visited Norway I was completely awestruck,” she said.
“So much of it feels like walking into a painting.
“Nature is more present here than anywhere I’ve been.” Norwegians have a word for that feeling, friluftsliv, which translates loosely to “open-air living” and describes the sense of wellbeing that comes from simply being outdoors.
Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city and the departure point for many European and international cruises, shows how compact Norwegian cities can feel.
Ringed by seven mountains, Bergen keeps the pace of a small town, and the Fløibanen funicular carries visitors up Mount Fløyen for a view over the whole harbour within minutes.
The old wharf district, Bryggen, is UNESCO World Heritage-listed, with wooden buildings dating back 900 years.
“While Bergen is Norway’s second-largest city, it still feels like a small town,” Öqvist says, “it’s all wooden houses, sea air and cinnamon buns.”
The city’s reputation for rain is well earned as Bergen is often ranked among the wettest cities in Europe.
This is a fact locals treat as a running joke.
As Öqvist puts it, quoting a well-known Norwegian saying: “det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær”, translated, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
Nordic Visitor is one of Europe’s leading specialist travel agencies, planning and operating tailor-made self-drive and guided tours across more than 20 destinations. Founded in Reykjavík in 2002, they have grown from a small downtown booking office into a team hundreds strong, with local experts and offices
across the continent.
They aim to help people confidently connect with new places and cultures all over Europe and are part of Travel Connect – a group of seven specialist travel brands operating across Northern Europe.
Find out more at nordicvisitor.com/norway.
