We Took a Magical Household Journey to Norway Throughout the Winter—The best way to Go to

I’m a toddler of the tropics. I grew up in coastal South India, simply above the equator, amid lush rice fields and a superb burning solar. I wore T-shirts, shorts, and sandals all year long; closed footwear had been a clammy imposition. So what was I doing on a stormy, freezing hill in December, knee-deep in snow, bundled in 4 layers of protecting clothes and thick boots? How did I find yourself in Norway for Christmas, snowshoe climbing at 2,600 ft, overlooking a frigid fjord sculpted by historic glaciers?

The trail that led me and my household to that snowy hill is considerably inconceivable: it started with a web based recreation known as GeoGuessr. The sport flashes scenes from Google Avenue View throughout a display screen, and gamers should determine the places. My son, aged 15, has spent too many hours taking part in it. Because of this, he has developed an acute, considerably weird, information of obscure geographies. One in all his specialties is Scandinavia. Late one evening, he insisted we ebook our tickets for the approaching December. “Norway in winter is my life’s dream,” he stated, plaintively. What self-respecting mum or dad may deny their youngster such a deeply held want?

And so we discovered ourselves in Oslo two days earlier than Christmas, town deserted for the vacations, most retailers and eating places shuttered. We wandered its broad avenues, which had been lined with mounds of packed snow, and its elegant parks, clad in sheets of ice. Close to the middle of city, within the previous harbor space, a abandoned promenade ran between frosty vistas and imposing museums and cultural buildings. The long-lasting sloped roof terrace of the Oslo Opera Home, which swarms with vacationers in hotter months, was now closed to guests. Cruise ships sat, as if deserted, within the harbor, no passengers or crew in sight.

There was one nook of the bay that did, nonetheless, appear busy. On the fringe of a dock, subsequent to a modern wood-and-glass construction that appeared like a floating bunker, a gaggle of women and men stood shirtless within the chilly. They approached the water and, to my astonishment, plunged in. The constructing was a floating sauna; everybody I spoke with swore by the bodily and psychological advantages of the speedy transition from warmth to chilly supplied by these dives. My preliminary sighting of this apply set my coronary heart racing. It appeared like a ritual reserved for locals—undoubtedly not one thing a customer from the tropics would ever try. 

After three days in Oslo, we headed to the village of Flåm, some 200 miles to the northwest in a mountainous area recognized for its UNESCO-listed fjords. Earlier than arriving in Norway, my son had advised me in regards to the prepare trip from Flåm to Myrdal, which was reputed to be one of the vital scenic on the earth, and he confirmed me lists that described the journey as “breathtaking,” “spectacular,” and “epic.” I quickly discovered that none of this was exaggeration.

We began early within the morning, using by means of white landscapes that stretched to an orange horizon the place the solar perched gently, like a ball of butter. There was a soothing predictability to all of it, the monotony of snow-covered fields and thinned-out birches and spruces passing over us like a balm, interrupted once in a while by an remoted hamlet or residence seemingly trapped within the ice. I puzzled how their inhabitants received out and in; maybe, I assumed, they hibernated within the winter. 

At Myrdal Station, which was crowded with Norwegians wearing colourful ski outfits, we modified to a smaller prepare. It was slower, stuffed principally with vacationers, and the environment had been very totally different. We made our manner on a slim observe in a craggy panorama of grey rock and icicles, with the occasional stream flowing—seemingly impossibly—by means of frozen ice. The prepare descended right into a valley, on what I later realized was one of many world’s steepest standard-gauge railway traces. 

Round six hours after leaving Oslo, we arrived in Flåm, the place we walked to a low-slung shed by the Aurlandsfjord. There we met Julie Aksnes Williams, a pupil within the close by metropolis of Bergen and a part-time information for Fjordsafari. She greeted us with a distinctly American twang. Though she had grown up round Flåm, her father was from Barbados. It appeared becoming that I’d been matched with a information who was acquainted with each the snow and the tropics. 

“Any of you ever gone snowshoe climbing earlier than?” she requested, smiling. We stared again blankly. So she piled us into her automotive and drove up a winding mountain observe till we reached what appeared like the tip of the highway. She unloaded 5 units of snowshoes, helped us strap in, then led us into the white hills, below frozen bushes that stood like sentinels.

The snow was 4 or 5 ft deep, powdery and lightweight, and our snowshoes barely stored us from sinking. We made our manner up a steep incline, huffing and puffing—I realized that snowshoe climbing is significantly extra exhausting than the normal model—after which, after about half an hour, we discovered ourselves above the clouds, in a clearing. Beneath us, like a sudden revelation, opened a panorama of hazy, stormy mountains and darkish fjords.

Williams unpacked a thermos and served us a sizzling—and really candy—drink constructed from black-currant syrup. The world felt far-off and, save for a number of twinkling lights, empty; it appeared we had the fjords to ourselves.

I used to be disabused of this notion the subsequent day, nonetheless, after we met Williams once more, this time for a trip alongside the fjords in a inflexible inflatable boat, or RIB. We got here bundled in our warmest winter gear, however the workers at Fjordsafari advised us that we would wish one thing heavier for the temperatures out on the water—which, they warned, might be 15 levels colder. So we had been draped in thick layers of thermal put on, coated with neon-colored flotation fits, and adorned with tinted goggles and durable rubber boots. We appeared like astronauts. 

The setting was, certainly, moonlike—a panorama of rocky hills dotted with frozen waterfalls and patches of white. However as we went farther out onto the water, the wind blowing brutally onto our cheeks, I began seeing indicators of human habitation amid the otherworldly surroundings: purple barns, picket docks, even a lodge set on high of a mountain (which, Williams knowledgeable us, may solely be reached by a 45-minute hike).

Progressively, as we went deeper into the fjords, villages revealed themselves. They had been inhabited by a handful of individuals and some goats; one village had a single resident. The existence of pastoral life on these hills was maybe essentially the most shocking side of our fjord tour. I had come to Norway anticipating a Twenty first-century European nation with spectacular nature, and I wasn’t dissatisfied. However I didn’t anticipate centuries-old life clinging tenaciously to the hillsides.

We stopped at Undredal, a picturesque hamlet well-known for a goat inhabitants that outnumbers people by a ratio of 5 to 1. The village can be recognized for its brown goat “cheese”—a candy Norwegian confection constructed from whey that extra intently resembles fudge than cheese—and we sampled some, together with domestically produced sausages, in a restaurant by the water. We took a number of moments to wander the city’s icy paths and walked previous its Twelfth-century stave church, which is reportedly the smallest nonetheless in use in Scandinavia. Then we clambered again into our motorboats and returned to Flåm.

Williams and I made a plan to fulfill later that afternoon; I advised her I needed to higher perceive how the city and its environment had modified through the years. First, although, my household and I had an appointment that had been nagging at me all morning: a reservation at a type of floating saunas.

We constructed up our braveness with a lunch of burgers and pizza on the Flåm Marina, a comfy place with beneficiant views of the fjord. I confess to experiencing a low degree of tension all through the meal, a trepidatious internal monologue about whether or not I might really make the leap. The water, we had been advised, hovered close to freezing, on the low facet even for the season. Maybe, I rationalized, I may skip it, on a day that even locals may contemplate chilly. 

However then lunch was over and my household, seemingly much less hesitant than I used to be, ambled over to the sauna, and I actually had no selection however to observe. Earlier than I knew it we had been stripped right down to our swimming wear and ensconced within the woody heat of a room overlooking the fjord. This, after all, was the straightforward half. We reclined on the picket benches and gazed out on the shimmering water, which was backed by shadowy peaks. I may have stayed in there all afternoon.

Depend on teenage boys to disrupt their mother and father’ consolation zones. About quarter-hour in, my sons opened the door to the sauna and walked onto the deck outdoors. I determined it was irresponsible—to not point out damaging to my popularity—to allow them to take this plunge alone. And so I stepped out, pushed them gently apart, took a deep breath, lowered myself down a ladder, then treaded considerably frantically within the frigid chilly till I’d counted to 12 (I used to be decided to go over 10). Then I pulled myself up the ladder, to common acclaim from the household.

For us fathers, respect is hard-won—and sometimes short-lived. To our proper, on an adjoining floating sauna, a gaggle of Norwegians laughed loudly of their swimsuits, cannonballing and frolicking within the fjord for prolonged durations, as if on spring break in some form of tropical paradise. 

Later, at midnight blue mild of afternoon, Williams and I walked alongside town’s docks: previous a few ferries, anchored in a single day, and a row of colorfully painted picket buildings. The constructions had been immaculately preserved, and the streets that ran alongside them had been virtually empty. The entire scene was positively pastoral, virtually too quaint to be true. I advised Williams how stunned I used to be by the obvious continuity of life within the space. “This city appears to be like unchanged,” I stated. “Are these buildings actual, or had been they constructed for a film set?”

She laughed, and confirmed that these had been certainly originals. However she added that issues weren’t fairly as static as they may seem. She stated I used to be fortunate to be visiting in winter, when the city wasn’t as crowded and retained one thing of its authentic really feel. In summers, she went on, Flåm’s slim dockside might be overwhelmed with vacationers disembarking from cruise ships, which convey noise and air pollution. Some farmers had lately protested; they painted no cruise ships on bales of hay. As at all times, she stated, tourism was a double-edged sword: even because the crush of outsiders disrupted life, it additionally offered the revenue—and incentive—for Flåm to guard its previous. “Folks work actually laborious to deal with this place and protect its authentic feeling,” Williams advised me. 

We had been standing in entrance of a prepare station when Williams advised me all of this, going through a carriage that might have been crowded with vacationers just some hours earlier, earlier than public transportation into Flåm shut down for the day. Williams advised me she used to take this prepare residence from faculty when she as a toddler. She sat with the conductors they usually helped together with her homework. Now the brand new conductors don’t acknowledge her; they yell at her for not loading her winter gear accurately.

“That’s simply the way in which it’s,” Williams stated, considerably ruefully. “Some issues change, and a few issues keep the identical. It’s only a truth of life.”

Kids of the tropics belong on seashores; we lengthy for crystal-clear water, white sands. For our final cease in Norway, we flew to Tromsø, 217 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Seashores had been the very last thing on my thoughts after we landed. Temperatures hovered under freezing; the city was bathed in a perpetual winter darkness. But late one evening, we discovered ourselves standing on a seashore. 

Sommarøy is a city about 22 miles outdoors Tromsø, and we had traveled there with a gaggle in hopes of seeing the northern lights. The seashore was in contrast to some other I’d visited. Sheets of undulating snow led into gently lapping Arctic waves. There have been no sand dunes, solely hills of silvery ice that shone like miniature Alpine peaks below an almost-full moon.

The northern lights had been on our bucket record. We had been decided to spherical off our journey with a sighting, however the night started inauspiciously. Sarah Caufield, our Canadian information, advised us that the viewing had been poor in current weeks. The lights had been capricious, she stated, and nobody actually understood when or how they would seem. All we may do was hope. 

We stood for greater than an hour on the freezing seashore, gravitating towards a campfire maintained by one other group. We scoured the sky, admiring the good stars, generally wishfully seeing indicators of the lights in wisps of clouds. Caufield monitored an app on her telephone, attempting to gauge our probabilities. Some individuals gave up and returned to sit down inside their parked automobiles.

Then, immediately, we noticed a faint inexperienced hint, adopted by a extra pronounced line, which quickly grew to become an simple arc ripping throughout the sky. Folks got here operating again from the parking zone. The seashore was stuffed with admiring “oohs” and “aahs.” The lights ebbed and flowed; they’d cool down for some time, after which explode once more, generally in shiny traces and generally in dramatic neon swirls. It was like being at a Fourth of July present, besides throughout winter. 

We watched in awe, taking within the thriller of the Arctic evening. After some time, I requested my son if he was chilly and instructed we head again to the heat of our car. “Are you kidding?” he stated. “That is my dream come true.” 

Oslo

Sommerro

A glamorous property housed in a Thirties constructing, simply across the nook from the Royal Palace. The cavernous espresso store is nice for people-watching. Don’t miss the heated out of doors pool on the highest ground.

Fukuya

A comfortable neighborhood Asian restaurant proper off Frogner Park, good for sushi or a Thai curry on a chilly day.

Frogner Park

Expansive lawns, coated with spectacular sculpture, stretch seemingly into the horizon. On weekends, the park teems with households with younger youngsters. 

Flåm

Fretheim Resort

A mixture of previous and new structure, this lodge has spectacular views of the encompassing hills and fjords. The dinner buffet is a satisfying choice after a day of climbing.

Ægir Brewpub

A pub and restaurant in a picket constructing. Its Viking-themed menu affords a smorgasbord of conventional dishes.

Flåm Marina Café

A family-run institution connected to a small condominium lodge, this place has an enviable location overlooking the fjord and serves pizzas and burgers.

Fjordsafari

The pleasant, skilled guides at this firm can take you on snowshoe hikes or boat rides alongside the fjords. Security is taken significantly, as is safety from the chilly.

Fjorena

Take a look at your braveness as you progress between the nice and cozy sauna inside and the freezing fjord outdoors. The sauna affords superb views. 

Flåm Railway

This small prepare leads down one of many steepest railway traces on the earth, and cuts by means of gorgeous, craggy surroundings. Attempt to get a seat in one of many entrance carriages for the perfect view.

Bergen

Bergen Børs Resort

Norway’s second-largest metropolis is the gateway to the fjords. This stunning lodge, which as soon as housed the inventory change, faces a sq. lined with heritage buildings, just some blocks from the water. Its restaurant is embellished with gorgeous frescoes.

Allmuen 

In a metropolis recognized for its meals scene, Allmuen stands out for the freshness and inventiveness of its delicacies. It makes use of native produce for Mediterranean-inspired menus that change each day.

Tromsø

Vervet Condo Resort

Trendy residences in an up-and-coming neighborhood simply outdoors town heart, with a group of eating places and low retailers within the neighborhood.

Bardus

This upscale restaurant within the coronary heart of city has an connected bar that’s extra relaxed and fewer crowded.

Bengts Bistro

A no-frills place with an genuine vibe. The menu highlights pizza and grilled kebabs.

Tromsø Mikrobryggeri & Balthazar Vinbar

A microbrewery and wine bar set in a comfy Nineteenth-century constructing on one of many most important streets.  

Polar Museum

This small, unassuming museum offers an amazing introduction to life close to the Arctic Circle. It features a historical past of seal looking, artifacts from the dramatic races to the North Pole, and photographic and narrative proof of the hardships generations have endured within the bitter chilly. 

Arctic Information Providers

This firm, one among many offering excursions and excursions, is dependable and staffed with educated guides. It affords northern lights and “midnight solar” experiences, in addition to climbing within the surrounding hills.

A model of this story first appeared within the December 2024 / January 2025 difficulty of Journey + Leisure below the headline “Fjord Focus.”