Norway has more fjords than any map can properly show. The country’s western coastline is so deeply indented that if you straightened it out it would reach around the equator twice. Choosing which fjords to visit is therefore not a question of finding the best ones so much as understanding which ones reward the time you have and the style of travel you prefer.
I have done the Norway in a Nutshell route that every travel agent recommends, and I have driven the western fjords independently over twelve days. The difference in what you actually experience is considerable.
Sognefjord: The One Everyone Has Heard Of
Sognefjord is the longest and deepest fjord in Norway and consequently the most visited. The main fjord is genuinely enormous and the scale of it is difficult to process until you are standing in a ferry watching the walls rise on both sides to over a kilometre. The problem is that the main fjord is also wide, so the mountains feel distant.
The side fjords are better. Naeroyfjord, a UNESCO-listed branch of Sognefjord, is only 250 metres wide at its narrowest point and the walls rise almost vertically on both sides. Taking the ferry from Gudvangen to Flam through Naeroyfjord is one of the most dramatic short boat trips in the world. Do it on a weekday in May or September to avoid the cruise ship crowds.
Geirangerfjord: The Most Dramatic Scenery
Geirangerfjord has the waterfalls. The Seven Sisters cascade down the cliff face on one side of the fjord, the Suitor falls on the other, and the village of Geiranger sits at the end like a punchline to a geography joke. The scenery is extraordinary and widely photographed and the village receives approximately one million visitors per year, most of them from cruise ships.
Arrive by car via the Eagle Road rather than by sea. The road drops down from the Dalsnibba viewpoint at 1500 metres through seventeen hairpin bends to the fjord, and the view from the top on a clear morning is one that justifies the entire trip to Norway.
Hardangerfjord: The Underrated One
Hardangerfjord sits south of Sognefjord and receives significantly fewer visitors despite being one of the most beautiful fjords in the country. In April and May the apple and cherry orchards along the fjord shore are in blossom, a combination of snow on the mountains above and flowers at sea level that looks genuinely impossible.
The Hardangervidda plateau above the fjord is the largest mountain plateau in northern Europe and can be walked or cycled across in summer. The village of Utne, where the two main arms of the fjord meet, has one of the oldest hotels in Norway and a ferry connection that makes it accessible without a car.
Lysefjord and Preikestolen: Worth the Hike
Preikestolen, the flat-topped rock platform 604 metres above Lysefjord, appears on every Norway travel list and the photographs do not exaggerate. The four-hour return hike from the car park is steady rather than technical and rewards everyone who attempts it with one of the most vertiginous views in Europe. Do not attempt it in July without arriving at the trailhead before seven in the morning.
The fjord below Preikestolen is accessible by boat from Stavanger, which is a more relaxed way to see it if hiking is not on the agenda. The cruise up the fjord passes the rock from below and gives a sense of its scale that looking down from the top cannot provide.
