If you want the measure of just how pleasant the Norwegians are, I advise a
visit to the Laerdal tunnel. The tunnel is part of the route between Oslo
and Bergen; at just over 24km (15 miles) long, it is the longest road tunnel
in the world. For safety’s sake, every 6km there is a chance to turn around;
and every huge lay-by is designed to look like a cave carved into a glacier,
complete with glowing, dawny lights. Our guide, Leila, took us in her car to
the first of these.
“When the tunnel was opened in 2000,” she said, “young people would stop in
this lay-by and stay overnight, have parties.” I couldn’t blame them – it
was pretty amazing. “But it wasn’t really safe.” Quite right, I thought,
but, knowing the yobbish nightlife of Britain, wondered how it would be
possible to get the kids out. Leila pointed to a sign, the international
symbol for No Stopping. “So that was put up,” she said, “and the problem was
over.”
See? I love Norway. I’ve loved it since I read about the great explorers of
this young country, men like Roald Amundsen, discoverer of the Northwest
Passage and first man at the South Pole. I loved it for its eerie folk tales
and their trickster hero Askeladden, the Ashlad. But I had been only once –
to see Amundsen’s sturdy ship, the Fram, now in an Oslo museum – and I
wanted to come back with my family, to see more of this enticing place.
We were halfway through our trip when we visited the party-free tunnel. We –
me, my husband Francis and our six-year-old, Theo – had begun in Oslo. What
six-year-old could argue with the simple, yet awesome, spectacle of Oslo’s
Viking Ships Museum?
The museum – along with most of the city’s other museums – is a short bus ride
out of the city, on the Bygdøy peninsula (in summer you can take a ferry).
Visit and you understand the awe a Viking force would have engendered. The
two largest ships, discovered in burial mounds in the early 1900s, are each
more than 20m (65ft) long and well over a thousand years old, yet each looks
ready, still, to ride the whale-road of the ocean. Theo had read about the
Vikings; these ships, and their treasure troves, made what he had read real.
Now a short pause for a word of warning. Of course, after our visit to the
museum we were as hungry as Nordic raiders. We had discovered the Norwegian
chain Deli de Luca, a bit like Pret A Manger, but with a little more on
offer. There is, however, one crucial difference. If Theo and I had had a
box of sushi each and a coffee in Pret, let’s say, we’d have paid £14. The
same in Deli de Luca was over twice that.
Norway is many things, but inexpensive is not one of them. Both Oslo and
Bergen have plenty of trendy restaurants, but we enjoyed the traditional
meals we ate at the Gamle Rådhus in Oslo (reindeer with lingonberry sauce;
delicious) and To Kokker in Bergen (cloudberries and cream; sublime). Still,
we reeled when the bills came.
We left Oslo for the north. We were headed for Bergen, but we’d take the train
first to Flåm, a sweet little town nestling in a fjord, and then travel by
boat along the Sognefjord to Gudvagen and Voss. It takes about four
spectacular hours to travel by train from Oslo to Myrdal, up through
Norway’s high, bleak central plateau. Here is where Amundsen trained for his
polar journey; here the houses are few and far between, though with their
bright red paint and pair of reindeer antlers over the doors, they look cosy
against the black rock and the white snow (some have grass roofs; a goat can
be handy for keeping this in trim, I’m told).
At Myrdal you join the Flåmsbana scenic railway, still one of the world’s
engineering wonders, dropping almost 900m over its 20km length; The Flåm
railway is one of the world’s steepest railway lines on normal gauge.
A ride on the Flåmsbana is part of the Tourist Board’s “Norway in a Nutshell”
tour, as is the breathtaking two-hour ferry trip we took along the fjord to
Gudvagen. I would count this as among the finest couple of hours of my life,
not least because the sweet waitress in the little shipboard café handed
Theo hot pancakes without a kroner changing hands and replaced his hot
chocolate when he dropped it. If you wonder why the Norwegians tell stories
filled with savage trolls, you have only to look at the peaks that loom over
the cold, bright water of the fjords. Here is wild and forbidding beauty.
Bergen is another couple of hours’ train ride from Voss – a charming town with
a lot of sport, skiing and boating, in winter and summer – and I think it’s
here, within this city’s seven hills, that I would make my Norwegian home.
Of course, Bergen has its disadvantages. People there tell a story about a
traveller who asks a local boy how long it’s been raining. “I don’t know,”
says the boy. “I’m only 13.”
Bergen is made especially lovely by the survival of Bryggen, the wooden shops
and houses by the harbour that are an 18th-century legacy of the city’s
Hanseatic past. It is a lovely city to explore on foot, or take the
Fløibanen funicular railway for a quick trip above the city and see it
spread out below. Theo loved Bergen’s aquarium, reached by a tiny ferry that
leaves every ten minutes or so to cross the harbour; and he loved our hotel,
as did we – the new Clarion Collection Hotel Havnekontoret.
Norway in a Nutshell is a whirlwind tour. But when you love a place, you want
to go back; and that’s what we talk about now. Of course, it’s not the place
to go if you want to party in a tunnel, but that’s OK with me.
Need to know
Getting there: Erica Wagner and family flew with Norwegian Air Shuttle
(00 47 21 49 00 15, www.norwegian.no)
from Stansted to Oslo and back from Bergen. Fares start at £34 each way.
Getting around: Flytoget (www.flytoget.no) airport express train takes
19 minutes to Oslo Central Station. Train and bus travel around Norway can
be booked through NSB (www.nsb.no). Fjord
Tours (www.fjord-tours.com) offers
one to three-day Norway in a Nutshell tours using public transport.
Staying: SAS Radisson Plaza Hotel, Oslo (00 47 22 05 80 00, www.radissonsas.com)
has B&B doubles from £101; Fretheim Hotel, Flam (57 63 63 00, www.fretheim-hotel.no),
from £88; Fleischer’s Hotel, Voss (56 52 05 00, www.fleischers.no),
from £104; Clarion Collection Hotel Havnekontoret, Bergen (55 60 11 00, www.choicehotels.no),
from £85.
Reading: The Insight Compact Guide Norway (£5.99) is published this
month.
Further information: www.visitoslo.com;
www.visitbergen.com; www.visitnorway.com/uk.
