A tour of Norway

This tour is an integral part of a much wider journey made with an InterRail rail ticket, also including the crossing of Switzerland, West Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and European Turkey, with visits to many cities along the way. I reached Norway in the evening on the Frederikshavn (Denmark)-Moss ferry. Overnight stay in a small but elegant hotel in the centre, and the following morning on by train to Oslo. In the capital, following Karl Johans gate to the gardens and the Royal Palace, then the Town Hall and the waterfront where stalls sell delicious shrimp-filled rolls. During the night I travelled by train to Trondheim, where I arrived the next morning. I visited the city with its fine Gothic cathedral and some characteristic wooden houses.

Nearby, on a hill, I spent the afternoon in the lovely open-air Ethnographic Museum. Here there are reconstructions of houses and settings from all over Norway, such as a typical wooden church, the Stavkirke, where I witnessed the celebration of a wedding. Inside the museum there are also displays such as the one on the history of skis, invented in these parts. The road back into the city offers a fine panorama over the Trondheim fjord. From here I took a night train to Bodø, a modern town from which a small boat leaves for the island of Værøy, where I arrived in the evening after a stop at the nearby Røst archipelago. The main village of the small island, Sørværøy, is a sparse group of wooden houses facing the little harbour and surrounded by structures used for drying fish. The island is mountainous and wild, constantly overflown by flocks of birds.

After sleeping in a typical little house, the next day I woke up to an island lashed by heavy rain and shrouded in fog, so it was impossible to go out except in the evening to catch the little boat back to Bodø. From this town you can continue north only by bus, and so I did as far as Tromsø. Indeed at Narvik, the town I passed through, there is a railway line but it comes from Kiruna in Sweden. The journey to Tromsø crosses desert regions, winding around fjords or crossing them with a short ferry hop. Every now and then along the road there is a service station with refreshments or a small group of colourful houses. Tromsø, by contrast, is a real city set on an island and connected to the mainland by a long bridge.

I wandered around the modern centre until late at night without ever seeing darkness, because here the sun never sets, then I slept in a small wooden cabin in a campsite on the mainland side. The following day a short tour of the city and departure by bus for the far north. By now the route is in full Lapland territory and every now and then you see a local inhabitant dressed in this people's typical garment. Among sea and mountains bare of vegetation we reach a motel near Alta where I sleep. The next day the bus drops me at Kalfjord and from here by ferry to the island of Magerøya, where I find accommodation in a tourist village with wooden cabins. Here you lose all sense of time; you never know when it's day and when it's night.

Reaching North Cape, despite the film shown at the local centre, is only a symbolic destination, also because the northernmost point of Europe is shrouded in fog and you can see nothing. I wait all the same for a midnight without sun and go back to the village to sleep. The following day, ferry to Kalfjord and overnight stay at Karasjok, the inland town considered the capital of the Norwegian Lapps, where you have to fight the insects that by the thousands try to swoop on people. At the campsite where I sleep in a cottage it is practically impossible to stay outside without being badly bothered by these little flying creatures. The following morning I take the bus for Finland, which I reach from the Karigasniemi border. Absolutely not to be missed: this journey that offers unusual landscapes.

North Cape is only the destination to reach but is perhaps the least interesting part of the trip. Special mention, however, goes to Trondheim, the island of Værøy and that of Magerøya. A tour of Norway should also include the Lofoten and Vesterålen islands, so for those, along with further details on the country, I refer you to the OLYMPIC NORWAY itinerary.