My DIY Norway in a Nutshell Tour to Bergen – Part Two

Needless to say, I’m not going anywhere for spring break this year. But last year, my then-ten-year-old daughter and I went to Norway. A chunk of our trip was dedicated to the “Norway in a Nutshell” tour. Like the Golden Circle in Iceland, it’s a roughly defined loop in the southern part of the country with a few popular tourist attractions that have been built up into “you haven’t been there if you missed this” status. I wrote about the first part of this trip within a trip earlier. Now you can read the rest of the story.

The Nutshell in a Nutshell

Norway in a Nutshell usually involves Oslo and Bergen, the rail line in between, a fjord tour, and the Flåmsbana train ride. People do it in either direction, and sometimes only one way. Most people take two days to complete it, but you can cram it into one (minus the return trip) or stretch it to a whole vacation, depending on how much ground you want to cover each day.

You can pay big money for a package tour, but since all versions rely on public transportation, it’s just as easy and half the price to DIY your Nutshell. During our spring break trip last year, my daughter and I did a DIY Nutshell tour.

Dawn Day Two

You can’t really say “the day dawned.” If you looked straight up, the sky was blue. But the mountains were so steep that none of that sunshine made its way down into the valley while we were there. Instead, the second day of our Nutshell started. It started in the sleepy little town of Flåm. Honestly, Flåm barely qualifies as a town. It’s more like fjord version of those diner/gas station/hotels that line American highways. Except that it’s in a narrow little fjord of exquisite beauty and instead of a blip as you drive by, it’s a cozy little bowl you can settle into. There’s nothing much to do, but we were genuinely tempted to settle into our little cabin do nothing much for the rest of our trip.

But adventure called, so we packed up our cabin and dragged our bags down to the dock. After a sweet breakfast at the Flåm bakery, we made our way to the 9 am sailing of the Flåm Ferry.

Getting to Gudvangen

You’ll see the boats through Norway’s fjords referred to as ferries, tours, and cruises, but there aren’t really three different systems. Until recently, ferries were the fastest way to get around the mountainous fjord region. Nowadays most towns have been connected by impressive mountain roads and tunnels, but the boats are still a legitimate form of transportation, especially for those who hate driving twisty mountain roads.

Four our tour, we chose the Fjord Cruise Nærøyfjord, which is only two hours long. It connects the tiny village of Flåm in Aurlandsfjord to the even smaller Gudvangen in in the Nærøyfjord. Despite traveling in the off-season, the car deck of our ferry was empty and the passenger decks were crowded with busloads of Chinese tourists. It was cold out on the water, but it was not impossible to tune out the chattering crowd and imagine what it must have been like to travel these icy, still waters in decades or even centuries past.

Viking Village

We arrived in Gudvangen around 11 am. Gudvangen is, if you can believe it, even smaller than Flåm. There is literally only the hotel/restaurant, the Viking village, maybe a dozen houses, and a Shell station up on the highway. But the Gudvangen Fjordtell looked super cute, and if we had visited in the summer when the Viking Village is open for longer hours, I would totally spend the night there to get an early start on the Viking stuff in the morning.

The restaurant attached to the hotel kindly let us stow our luggage and use the restroom before we moved on to the Viking Village, Njardarheimr. By that time the ferry crowds had already raided the hotel gift shop and cleared out on bus ride to Bergen.

We were the only people arriving at the living history/reenactment village, and jumped in on a tour already in progress with one other family. Since it was the off-season, a lot of the village’s activities were not taking place. But we still got to shoot arrows and throw axes. And, even though, as expected, I didn’t learn very much new, the experience was perfect for firing the imagination of a ten year old. (They also had one of the best gift shops I’ve seen, with lots of handicrafts instead of tchotchkes. If we hadn’t needed to run for the bus, I could have spent big money there.)

Bergen Bound

Around noon the sun finally crested the mountains, but we still needed to warm ourselves by one of the most delicious bonfires I’ve ever experienced. (I’d say there was some Viking trick to building a good fire, but I’m pretty sure I saw a pallet in the wood pile.) Even with most of the village shut down, we could have stayed longer but for a 1:20 bus that we needed to catch to get to Bergen before nightfall. So we left the village around 1 pm and walked through the one block of town up the hill to the highway to catch our bus.

My plan was to take the bus to Voss and transfer to the Bergen train. That would have cost about $12 each and used up one day of our rail pass. But when I got on the bus, the driver asked if we were going all the way to Bergen, and I said yes. Our budget took a hit. I didn’t realize how expensive bus tickets are until I got home and saw my credit card statement. And I could have bought a 3 day rail pass instead of a 4 day pass, if I’d known a direct bus was an option.

There was a stave church in Voss, too. We drove past it on the bus. But it was worth the convenience of not having to schlep suitcases and a sleepy kid (she konked out halfway to Voss and barely woke up before we got to Bergen) from a bus stop to a train station.

The bus was every bit as comfortable as the train. And since we stocked up on sandwiches and snacks at the restaurant in Gudvangen before catching the bus, I didn’t miss the snack bar on the train. And the drive was beautiful.

Bergen

The bus arrived in Bergen a little after 4 pm. The bus station backs on to both the train station and a mall, and it took me a bit to get oriented and realize that all of our plans lay on the opposite side of that complex. We dragged our suitcases through the mall. We were hungry but too tired to deal with finding food (even in a mall) while dragging suitcases. So we had bubble tea for dinner before dragging our bags out onto the cobblestoned street and up the hill to our guesthouse.

We stayed at Marken Gjesthus an upstairs hostel on a little alley in the shopping district near the lake, just a few blocks from the train station. It was so very Scandinavian – incredibly clean and just on the comfortable side of spare. We had a room to ourselves right around the corner from the bathrooms. I think it was my favorite of the places we stayed in Norway. It made a great base within walking distance of everything we wanted to do in Bergen. But all of that would have to wait. We had just completed Norway in a Nutshell, and we were tired.