Until very recently, the easiest way to get around Norway was by boat. Even today, you could make a strong argument that it’s the best way to see the country. Certainly few people would argue that it’s the best way to see the area around the fjords. That’s why a fjord tour is a central part of the famous Norway in a Nutshell tour. For my own DIY Nutshell tour, I took the ferry from Flåm to Gudvangen.
A Three-Hour Tour
The hapless residents of Gilligan’s Island got stranded on what they expected to be a three-hour tour. When you’re touring the fjords, you can spend as long as you like. From the famous (and expensive) Hurtigruten that can last two weeks to regular old car ferries that drop you off in an hour, the choice is yours. And even if, like me, your fjord cruise only lasts a couple hours, about the only thing the experience will have in common with Gilligan’s is that you can bring all your luggage on board.
The Flåm Ferry
You don’t have to buy fjord tour tickets in advance, but they can sell out in the busy season. So it’s a good idea to get your tickets on the Visit Flåm website before you leave home. There are a lot of options to choose from. I chose the Fjord Cruise Nærøyfjord, which is only two hours long and connects the tiny village of Flåm in Aurlandsfjord to the even smaller Gudvangen in in the Nærøyfjord. Both fjords are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. You can take the ferry in either direction and you can take a shuttle bus back through the tunnel road that takes less than half an hour. We were starting from Flåm with the intent to visit Njardarheimr before continuing on to Bergen, so we brought our luggage with us. In another place, I might have been worried about the requirement to leave suitcases on the empty car deck, but even on a boat filled with other foreign tourists, it felt safe to do so on such a rural boat.
Problem People
The boat wasn’t actually completely full, but it was crowded enough that I was glad we were traveling in the off-season. Nearly everyone else on the boat was part of a Chinese bus tour. I try not to judge other people’s travel choices, and I appreciate that international travel is a relatively new option for the Chinese middle class. But big bus tourists have a way of taking up more space. They often seem more interested in gossiping over packed-from-home snacks than experiencing their trip, or seem more excited to look at the landscape in the photos they take with their selfie sticks than seeing directly with their own eyes. And they don’t seem to think the rules apply to them, even when the signs make sense without language.
Lest I give the impression that I’m only judgey about package tourists, I should also mention that on this day my daughter decided to ignore my advice to dress warmly for the boat. Literally everything you will read about the fjord tours will come with a warning that no matter what the weather is like, it’s cold out on the water. Not only does the wind cut right through you, but the mountains shade the boat a lot of the time.
But of course, my contrary little child refused to layer and then spent the whole trip complaining about the cold. We tried to warm her up with hot chocolate, but we also spent much more time inside (where all the seats were taken) than we would normally have chosen to.
The Up Side
One benefit of spending too much time inside was that we stumbled on the educational posters in a stairwell that talked about the native flora and fauna, as well as the creative economic endeavors of locals trying to make a living – like the brewery at Flåm and a farmer who made goat cheese – in an extremely rural area.
When we did come out from the shade of the looming mountains and enjoy some direct sunshine, we took a selfie party. And in our search for spots on the boat that were protected from the wind and the crowd, we also found a few like-minded seekers of solitude and beauty. Not to mention some incredible views devoid of selfie-sticks. There were a few moments when you could imagine what it would have been like in decades past to travel these waterways in your own little boat. With a little stretching of the imagination you could even turn the tourist chatter into the background noise of crowded longboat filled with isolated farmers and warriors excited for the Assembly and catching up on a year’s worth of gossip.
Docking in Gudvangen
I could easily see the appeal of a longer tour with multiple stops around the fjords. There are so many picturesque little spots that would be interesting to visit, but don’t have enough to do to hold you there overnight (especially given the time it would take to get there by road). And I imagine that the selfie frenzy would die down on a longer ride, allowing for more of those soul-soothing quiet moments contemplating the mountains from the aquatic perspective. But given our schedule, travel priorities, and wardrobe malfunctions, I was really glad we chose the two-hour Nærøyfjord tour.
Docking in Gudvangen and walking off the ferry was such a mundane and homely end to the journey that it added a new dimension. Instead of imagining legendary pasts, it felt a lot like getting off the Vashon ferry back home. That was a nice reminder that these legendary fjords are the everyday homes of a few lucky people, who may or may not remember on a daily basis why all those strangers with selfie-sticks are so worked up about the view.
{My ferry ticket was provided courtesy of Visit Flåm. The ticket was theirs, but as always, the opinions are mine.}
