After we met up with our friends again, we hit the road, destination BerlevĂĄg.  BerlevĂĄg is about a six-hour drive from Hammerfest, and the drive is just beautiful. (Read part one and part two of Maggie’s tour of Finnmark first!)

We stopped for lunch in Lakselv, where we had some excellent (but typically expensive) pizza, and later we stretched our legs at this lovely spot with a waterfall, called .

Here’s a short video of the coastline along the north of Norway as we approached Berlevåg:

This lighthouse is also not far away, and it’s one spot we’d come back that evening in order to properly view the midnight sun:

BerlevĂĄg is a fishing town on the northern coast of Norway, on a peninsula east of the more famous tourist spot, North Cape/Nordkapp.  It was occupied by German forces during WWII, burned down in 1944 (surprise), and subsequently rebuilt.

There’s really only one place in town to stay, the . Fortunately, it’s quite nice.  The Pensjonat has small apartments upstairs, complete with private kitchen and bathroom, and downstairs are guestrooms that have a shared bathroom in the hallway. Alternatively, you can camp out back.

We booked one of the apartments, and it was very comfortable. If you are there during the midnight sun, I do recommend bringing a sleep mask because the shades here weren’t blackout ones, unlike in the chain hotels we stayed in.

The Pensjonat is actually run by a Swiss man named Dieter.  He is fluent in English, so to book, you can just email him via the website (which currently seems to be only in Norwegian).  He was super nice to us while we were there, and even arranged for breakfast on our schedule. Breakfast will cost you extra, but the food offerings were plentiful, delicious, and convenient, so I recommend it.

Dieter and his wife also run the in town, just a couple minute walk from the Pensjonat.  I highly recommend stopping by – it’s filled with gorgeous pieces of art glass. Many of the pieces actually feature figures from the Alta rock carvings.

After we’d visited, I noticed our apartment actually had several pieces from their store.  The Glasstudio had lots of souvenir priced items, so I bought a piece of glass to hang from our window at home, which featured the petroglyph porpoises.

One of the pieces in our apartment showing Alta rock carving designs:

Our friends were playing for the next two nights at the Neptun Pub, but on our first night there, they told us to take the van and go see the midnight sun. So we did.  First we drove out to Kjølnes fyr (lighthouse). The original one was destroyed during the War (like everything else in Finnmark, seemingly).

Also, as you can see the lighthouse is not on during the summer – it’s not necessary because of the midnight sun!

We drove a bit further down the road, and found a beach from which to watch the midnight sun. It was perfect.

The next day we had time to wander around town. The weather was beautiful – in the 50s F (~13 C) and sunny. We had the band van again, so we drove back to the beach. The water was cold and clear with tons of smooth stones and tide pools, and growing on the rocky beach were plants with tiny purple flowers.

Next we headed down to the big breakwater, which was covered in tetrapods. They are really cool. Their special shape allows them to absorb the energy of the waves because the water can get around and through them.

After that we went to Kafe Velferden for lunch – it might have been the only place in town, but that was one of the best bacon cheeseburgers ever! There was a village festival going on in the afternoon that featured, of all things… a hot dog-eating contest. Here we were in the far north of Norway, witnessing one of the most American things ever.

Afterwards, our group retreated back to the pub to enjoy some reker (peel & eat shrimp) and Mack beer, and just relax. Relaxing with friends and getting the feel of a new place might be one of my favorite parts of travel.

If you plan on visiting Norway, I would definitely try out some of the more northern (or most northern!) cities.  You can’t beat the scenery, and you’ll come home having seen some truly unique, Norwegian things. And possibly a hot dog-eating contest.

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After we left the museum, we met up with my friends, and we started the drive up to Hammerfest. The city isn’t far from Alta, just under 2 hours by car. Read part one of Maggie's tour of Finnmark.

Hammerfest, which in the past competed with HonningsvĂĄg for world's northernmost city, has a history as an important Arctic port, especially because its harbor is sheltered enough to stay ice-free year round. Hammerfest was also destroyed by the retreating German army in 1944.

I had no idea what to expect as far as the landscape this far north, but it was gorgeous. Starker than in southern Norway, but still beautiful, especially near the water:

And we saw reindeer! Even though this was nothing new for Kjetil and Kai, they humored the Americans by stopping so we could take photos. Actually, we were sort of forced to stop because the reindeer were blocking the road.

In Hammerfest, we stayed at the , because the reviews said it was quiet. We ended up with a beautiful room (I booked a Superior Extra) that overlooked the water.

The view was just gorgeous (and I am already failing at coming up with different synonyms for “beautiful” and “gorgeous” because I find one uses those words a lot when describing Norway!)

For example, this was our view at breakfast the following morning:

The downtown area of Hammerfest is so small that even though the Scandic was “quiet,” it was still only a few blocks from restaurants and bars. My friends played at Stage, a gastropub/bar nearby, and I even got to join them for a few numbers!

One of the things I learned in Norway, is that you can order “a beer.” At home, you have to specify which kind, but everywhere we went in Norway, there was a default beer that you would be given when you ordered “a beer.”  In Oslo and Bergen it was Hansa, up north it was Mack.

The next morning Doug and I had time to wander around Hammerfest.  First we walked about 1.5 kilometers up the road from the Scandic, along the Rv94 highway (there is a walking path) to check out the big polar bear statue that greets you when you first drive into town.  The walk, and the site of the polar bear, offers really nice views of the town and the harbor.

Polar Bear Society

Then we walked back into town to hunt for the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society, founded in 1963! It’s called the Isbjørnklubben in Norwegian, literally the Polar Bear Club. I’d read about it online and couldn’t resist finding it so we could join, even though I knew it would be a super touristy thing to do. They actually have a nice little museum there that talks about some of Hammerfest’s history.

They are particularly proud of Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, a Hammerfest native who served as cook on three different polar expeditions, including Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole aboard the Fram, a boat to which there is a museum dedicated in Oslo.

If your cruise (on the Hurtigruten perhaps?) happens to dock at Hammerfest, you can literally follow the painted polar bear tracks right from your boat to their door!

If you want to join the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society, just ask at the cash register and they will direct you. It might be touristy, but since you can only join in person, the tiny enamel polar bear membership pin was a nice little souvenir of having visited this far off place in Finnmark county.

Hammerfest was also having a homecoming festival of sorts, Hammerfestdagan, while we were there, so there were lots of food tents, which we browsed as we wandered around town.

There were also lots of bands playing at night during Hammerfestdagan, which is why my friends were there! The annual festival held in July is a great time to visit.

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I’d become good friends with a Norwegian band (over the course of years of us all attending an annual Beatles music festival in the US), which gave me an interest in their country and language. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in my really wanting a chance to explore Norway for myself.

The advantage of having local friends is that you’re able to experience a place in a way that you can’t solely as a tourist. And though we were definitely tourists, we got to see some really out of the way places that not a lot of tourists (let alone American tourists) get to.

We did see Oslo and Bergen, and even drove up to the Sognefjord – all of which were wonderful.

But in this blog, I wanted to talk about some of the more northern locales we visited, because they are well worth seeing, and they were much more off the beaten path.

Touring the north of Norway

My Norwegian musician friends come from Alta, Norway, which has a latitude of almost 70 degrees north. That puts it about 379 kilometers (236 miles) above the Arctic Circle!

I knew I wanted to visit my friends while I was in their country, but, as it turned out, their band had offers for a couple of gigs while we were going to be there. Which is when we were asked, would we consider going with them for a mini tour of Finnmark county?

I didn’t have to consider very long before saying yes, and that is how I got to see not only Alta, but also Hammerfest and Berlevåg.

Despite Alta being so far north, it’s an easy two hours or so by plane from Oslo. I’d heard the approach into Alta was beautiful, because the flight path takes you right over the Altafjord… and it was. The edge of the runway is right on the fjord, and the approach gives you views of the water and of the city itself.

Exploring the Town

We stayed at the while we were in Alta. It had gotten good reviews – and, if you ask, you can get a room with a view of the Northern Lights Cathedral (in Norwegian, the Nordlyskatedral), which is quite striking. This was the view from our hotel room window:

We visited in July, so no actual Northern Lights – the sun never sets, so it never gets dark enough to see them. Though getting to see a good Northern Lights display remains on the bucket list, we did get to check off “seeing the midnight sun.”

While you can, of course, see the midnight sun from Alta, over dinner that night, my friend Bjørn recommended that we be sure to view it from a beach while we were in Berlevåg. That turned out to be an excellent suggestion. My husband, Doug, and I had time the next morning to explore a bit more before we had to leave for Hammerfest.

Aside from going into the Northern Lights Cathedral, we also walked over to see another nearby church, one of the few things left standing in Alta after the German army moved out near the end of World War II.

During 1943, Alta Fjord even served as a base for two German battleships and multiple destroyers. Much of Finnmark was left in ruins in the wake of the army’s retreat.

The Rock Art of Alta

Alta’s most famous tourist spot, however, is the Alta Rock Art Museum, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We weren’t sure what to expect, so we didn’t leave nearly enough time to see it all. If I were to go back, I would be sure I had three hours at minimum to enjoy it. The site has an indoor museum full of Viking artifacts and a visitor center (with cafeteria), as well several kilometers of walking paths that take you to various sites where there are old rock carvings. The petroglyphs date from a range of times, from between 2,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Since that time, the land has significantly risen. Though today all the rock carvings are well above the water level, back then, the rocks were in a zone where they were covered with water at high tide and fully revealed at low tide. The location of this intertidal zone shifted downwards as the land rose over time, which is why the oldest carvings are the highest ones. Water does feature prominently into the iconography also – fishing boats and even porpoises (or possibly whales) are depicted alongside land-based scenes of hunting and herding.

Some of the carvings had at one point in modern times been painted for better visibility. This practice is debated because it “compromises the conditions of authenticity.” I definitely appreciate that, though it’s also easy to see why it was done – it can be hard to see the carvings without the outlines. My favorite might be the porpoises because of how the artist used the natural ripples in the rock as water:

After we left the museum, we met up with my friends, and we started the drive up to Hammerfest, which isn’t far from Alta, just under 2 hours by car. Click here to read part two of this article about Hammerfest.

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Sometimes you have to face the inevitable – it’s impossible to see a whole country in ten days.  We knew that we’d be missing lots of Norway during our all too brief stay, but one thing we didn’t want to miss was checking out some fjords.

My husband and I had already planned to take the famous train line that runs between Oslo and Bergen, so we knew we could use Bergen as a base from which to explore.

Which fjords to pick?

We considered a number of different alternatives for seeing the fjords in this area: the Hardangerfjord, and located slightly farther north, the Sognefjord.

We looked into the Norway in a Nutshell tour to the Hardangerfjord but we were concerned it wouldn’t be enough to time to see the things we wanted to see. Would we be rushing around from bus to train to ferry with little time to explore?

On the other hand, their one day tour gets good reviews on Trip Advisor and it includes all the transportation for seeing Vik, Voss, a famous waterfall (Vøringfossen), as well as a fjord cruise.

Ultimately we decided we wanted to control our own fate and go a bit farther a field, up to the Sognefjord.

We rented a car in Bergen (we were able to arrange to return it to Bergen airport, which is quite a bit further south than the city itself) and booked a hotel way up in Sogndal so we could stay overnight.

Create your own itinerary

We had a somewhat tight schedule because we were due to fly up north to Alta to join our friends’ rock band on a mini tour of Finnmark – so everything had to be timed perfectly.

I did find two websites, one from fjordtours.com, and one from fjordnorway.com, which gave us time estimates for each leg of the journey. Between them and Google Maps, we were able to come up with a plan that we thought would work. And work it did!

One reason a drive up into the fjords is totally do-able in a limited amount of time is the sheer lack of traffic. We live in the Washington, DC area, and here, we have to factor traffic into every drive we take.

Once I looked into a “Sons of Norway” group in order to find somewhere to practice my Norwegian language skills, but they meet on the other side of DC from me – and during rush hour.

In the time that drive would take me, I could practically travel to actual Norway! Luckily, in actual Norway, the travel times we had estimated for each leg of our fjord trip ended up being right on.  In fact, we ended up at the airport 10 minutes ahead of schedule!

Here is the route we ended up taking:

Right after lunch, we took the E16 north out of Bergen. It’s 101 km to Voss, about 1 hr and 40 minutes, and (we counted!) over 33 tunnels.  We stopped in Voss for a bathroom break.  There is a really nice, clean rest stop right before Voss and if you miss it, there’s also a library where you can use a bathroom for a 10kr donation. They let us use it for free.

Seriously, only in Norway are the public bathrooms stops this beautiful.

Next we headed for Tvindefossen, a waterfall maybe 15-20 minutes out of Voss. You literally can’t miss it since you drive right past it. The drive between Voss and Tvindefossen had some of the prettiest scenery I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

We were there in late July and there were foxglove, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, and different colors of lupine everywhere. It was truly magical.

Here is Tvindefossen, with people to show scale. On this trip, I learned that Norway is a land of many, many waterfalls. This was a very pretty one and worth the time to stop and see it. It’s very easy to do this quickly if need be, as it really is right off the main road.

If you have time though, it’s worth walking around to get a nice close look at the falls, as well as the surrounding area.  Here’s that lupine I was talking about.

Then it was back in the car to drive the remaining 30 minutes or so to Gudvangen. We had planned to be there by 6pm (preferably earlier) to catch the ferry for the approximately 2.5 hour fjord cruise up Nærøyfjord, from Gudvangen up to Kaupanger.

The scenery on the drive continued to be spectacular, and we pulled over to take pictures a lot. Just look at those reflections!

Nærøyfjord is an UNESCO World Heritage site – as the name would imply, the fjord starts off very narrow and then opens up into Sognefjord. You can online in advance.

We didn’t know what to expect at the ferry terminal, but it was quite large. There was a gift shop and a bathroom – and there were also bathrooms aboard the ferry.  Though there was a cafĂ© on the boat, they didn’t stock much of anything, so I highly recommend bringing your own food if you can.

One of my Norwegian friends owns a Rema 1000 and had given us a bag of Norwegian goodies when we’d seen him in Oslo, so we spent our ferry ride snacking on RekeOst on crackers and melkesjokolade.

I’m not sure we’d ever been on a car ferry before – but it was very easy. You just drive your car on and then you can sit or stand wherever you like on the boat to watch the scenery. You can access your car if you need to without a problem.

We had a cloudy, nearly rainy day, which made the fjord very atmospheric – I’d be curious to see what it looked like in bright sun – I’m sure it would feel quite different.

Here’s the view from the back of the boat, looking at where we’d come from – you can see the cliffs on both sides of the fjord here are very close because it’s so narrow.

We got into Kaupanger around 8:45pm or so, but it was still quite light due to the time of year. We took a look at the nearby Kaupanger Stave Church while we were in town before driving on to our hotel.

We had hoped that we’d be able to at least walk around the churchyard to see the exterior of the building, since we knew we’d be there after their regular hours – and were pleased to find that that was very much the case.

We stayed overnight maybe a half hour away from Kaupanger, in Sogndal, at the . It’s an older hotel but our room was clean and comfortable.  I highly recommend doing what we did and pay a bit extra to get a fjord view room. It came with a little balcony with enough space for the two of us to sit out there and eat our take-out pizza.

This seemed to be the only food option open when we arrived in Sogndal! Fortunately it was tasty, and I did successfully order our pizza only using Norwegian, so I felt pretty good about this experience overall. Here’s a panorama taken from our balcony – such a peaceful view.  And still light at around 10pm.

I believe the hotel is family run and the person at the desk was so nice and very helpful to us. We had to leave super early to catch a ferry, before normal breakfast time, so he actually arranged for breakfast to be left out for us in the morning. It was really nice of them and very much appreciated.

After we ate, we got back on the road to catch our ferry from Hella to Vangsnes. We were tired from the previous day, so we pushed the schedule as late as we felt we could and still be on time for our flight out of Bergen that afternoon.  We also knew we wanted time to stop at Hopperstad Stave Church in Vik.

Arriving early for the ferry

Hella is less than a 40 minute drive from Sogndal.  We padded the drive with extra time just in case of traffic – we really had to be sure we didn’t miss the 8am ferry! As it happened, the extra time wasn’t necessary. There were few, if any, cars on the road, and I think we were the only ones who had arrived much before 8am!

The ferry ride was short, only 15 minutes. You can consult this ahead of time. Similar to the Nærøyfjord cruise, you just drive your car right on the ferry. Though you can access your car during the ride, it’s best to venture up a higher deck to watch the scenery.

Unlike at the Nærøyfjord, this wasn’t a cruise for tourists but a utilitarian boat, to get you where you need to go, a necessity when there aren’t always connecting roads!

Next we headed south to Vik, which wasn’t far, not even a half hour. We easily found the Hopperstad Stave Church, one of the oldest of them, dating to 1140 AD. We’d read that it was a 20-minute walk from the harbor, but there is no need to walk if you have a car – you can drive right up to the church. (And it actually looked like quite a long hike from the harbor.)

We were there pretty early in the morning so the church wasn’t open yet, but we were still able to look around the grounds. The building was absolutely gorgeous and SO very Norwegian.

After we left the Stavkirke, we stumbled on this pretty little Steinkirke, or Stone church, nearby – it dates to 1170 AD. It had dragon details on it, similar to the stave church, as well as a slate roof.

We said goodbye to Vik just a little bit regretfully – it is such a lovely place! As you drive up into the mountains, there is a pull out for a café with a stunning view of the town and fjord.

The café was closed, so we didn’t get the best view (which we would have had to pay them for) – but we still got a good view right next to it! Definitely worth pulling over to check this out.

As we continued up through the clouds, we saw snow!  There was a picnic spot where you could pull over, right before one of the tunnels. We snapped pictures of the snow – and a bunch of curious sheep that came over to investigate us.

Eventually, the scenery was back to greenery and wildflowers, indicating that we were close to Voss again. After Voss, the rest of the way to Bergen takes you back through those 33 or so tunnels – some of them were so long that by the end we couldn’t remember if we’d counted that one or not!

There are many ways to see Norway – from trains, ferries, airplanes… and yes, cars. There's no real wrong way to choose – it’s Norway, it’s going to be beautiful.

That’s really the good news. If you have limited touring time and don’t want to rent a car, the Norway in the Nutshell tours are available and they’ll take care of all the transportation for you.

But if you have the inclination, the driving in the fjord region is very easy and the traffic is light and as predictable as it gets, which can make planning your trip a breeze. Having a car also means you can stop for scenery any time you like – and those views are worth savoring.

Indeed, I found that this trip into the fjords wasn’t about the destination. It truly was about the journey.

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The line from Oslo to Bergen is one of the most famous and beautiful railway journeys in the whole world.

If you’re wanting to see some Norwegian scenery, you really can’t beat the Bergen Line (BergensBanen). Over the course of about six hours, the train will take you between over the mountains between Oslo and Bergen. The views are incredible. I’d read so much the BergensBanen, that my husband and I decided it was a must-see on our trip to Norway.

Read more: Norway by Train

We had started our vacation by meeting up with some friends in Oslo, and so we decided to take the train towards Bergen (though you can certainly also travel the other direction), and then to rent a car in Bergen and do some fjord exploration from there. Thus we only took the train one way.

Booking the trip

There are many ways to tour Norway, and Norway in a Nutshell is one way to do it. They offer a variety of trips up to the fjords where they cover all your transportation and a ride on the BergensBanen is included on some of their itineraries.

It’s worth doing an Internet search for package tours, if that is something that interests you. As for us, we wanted to be as independent as possible, so we booked things “a la carte.”

To book train tickets, you can go right to the . Eurorail also sells them (and if you Google for tickets, they will come up front and center), but the tickets were so much more expensive.

You can get seats in the Komfort car via Vy for way cheaper, even more so if you can buy at the minipris price. In 2015, we paid 878 NOK for 2 adults in Komfort via Vy, versus approximately 2,300 NOK via Eurorail. And that was for a regular car without seat assignments.

The Komfort car is nice, you can pick your seats, and it gives you more leg room. Supposedly it had a plug for charging phones, but I didn’t find one on our car.  Get a window seat – of course.

The trains have two seats per side, and either side of the train will give you a beautiful view. But if you want to see Finse and a lot of the mountain scenery, I’d sit on the left (if you are headed towards Bergen). That’s the side we sat on.

Sit back and enjoy

Some of the best scenery, up in the mountains, hits at around the fourth hour of the ride, and the last hour is all tunnels, so time your trip to the cafe car or the bathroom accordingly.

The food from the cafe cars was actually quite good and worth investigating. They have snacks and also hot food.  You can eat there or bring it back to your seat. We ate some heated food in the café car and also ate snacks in our seat.

As the train moves out from Bergen, it enters rolling, green mountains that reminded me a bit of Pennsylvania – though of course it pretty quickly becomes very Norwegian. As we climbed to higher elevations, we saw quite a lot of ice and snow – and we were there in July! I was told that this much snow in July was unusual, even in the mountains.

Here is Finse. It has an elevation of 1,222 meters (4,009 ft), which makes it the highest station on the entire Norwegian railway system. Fun fact: the scenes set on the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back were filmed right here in Finse!

We got some dinner – kjøttkaker og poteter i brun saus, or meatballs and potatoes in brown sauce – from the café car. It was actually really tasty! Then, we were down and out of the mountains:

The last hour of the trip is tunnels. Lots of tunnels. So this is a good time to take a nap (because the scenery you just spent hours watching was exhaustingly beautiful), or to get something to eat. And I mean A LOT of tunnels. You won’t get much of a view. When we drove the road that runs along train line later, we counted somewhere around 33 tunnels!

Of course, should you want to experience the ENTIRETY of the train ride, without actually going to Norway, the whole thing was recorded for Norwegian slow TV! The video doesn’t do the views justice, so I definitely recommend seeing it for yourself. It’s well worth your time.

Photos: Maggie Allien and

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