Sommervibber in Norway

[If you're like us and don't speak Norwegian, Sommervibber translates to "Summer Vibes", or at least that's what a convenience store sign assured us]

Note: this post for Norway ended up being quite long, so there’s an abridged highlights section below. If you have the time to keep reading, we cover everything we did in more depth in the “Our full Norwegian trajectory” section. We also have our Instagram if you're interested in periodic stories there.

Norway – the land of breathtaking scenery, electric vehicles, automated lawnmowers, endless baked goods, the midnight sun, and fjords. So. many. fjords. Genuinely, we don’t think taking a bad picture here is possible. Check these out (shot on an iPhone 15!).

What we loved

Reinebringen Hike

One hike more than the rest of them stood out: a midnight hike overlooking the town of Reine. The lighting was perfect, the weather was perfect, and the views were perfect. It was bizarre and wonderful to see sunlight cresting over the mountains in the middle of the night and to be energized when we should have been begging for sleep. We loved it so much we actually did it twice on back-to-back nights! The pictures speak for themselves.

Fjords

Fjords are simply spectacular — imagine crystal-clear glacier water snaking through towering mountains, past cascading waterfalls, and along ridgelines that soar between 1,000 and 4,500 feet high. They merge into lakes, rivers, and the ocean, creating a vibrant ecosystem teeming with sea eagles, giant jellyfish, and an endless supply of cod that keeps Norway's winter fishing traditions alive. We hiked, kayaked, and adventured around fjords on rib boats, constantly delighted by the views we stumbled upon each day. 

Baked Goods and Anita’s Seafood Restaurant

We quickly learned that baked goods are a Norwegian specialty to the extent that we’d consider them an independent food group. Cinnamon rolls, “cognac stang”, marshmallow mountains, scones, raspberry tarts, chocolate bread twists, and so much more. We’re both not particularly gluten tolerant (much to our demise), but we binged Norway’s baked goods nearly every day when we saw them at coffee shops or stand-alone markets until we were full.

Aside from baked goods, there’s a restaurant just outside of Reine called Anita’s Seafood. Tyler would have eaten there every day if he could. If you’re in the area and you like fish, please go so we can relive the experience through you. Their salmon sashimi was unrivaled according to Tyler. Aside from their main dishes, they also had an assortment of grab-and-go packaged items from the local cod season. Namely, dried and salted cod chips. Tyler was into it and claimed it was an excellent source of protein. Makenna was repulsed by the smell and yelled “No more fish snacks!” at one point in the car.

What surprised us in Norway

2040 electric vehicle infrastructure

If you want to see what the future of electric vehicles looks like, go to Norway. They’re everywhere. Google claims 80% of new vehicle purchases there are electric, and anecdotally that felt about right. We kept hearing about the Ford Mustang EVs in NY, but hadn’t seen one yet. Well, we found them all. They’re in Norway. Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Tesla, Polestar, etc. You name the manufacturer and we promise you can probably find their latest EVs silently sneaking around Norwegian roads. The charging infrastructure was more robust than we’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Every hotel, AirBnB, coffee shop, town, highway, and ironically even gas stations had charging ports available. Goodbye range anxiety.

It was genuinely neat to see what the future could look like back in the US when it comes to EVs. Both of our car rentals were EVs (one in the Lofoten Islands and one in Bergen), and we were delighted with the experience in both cars (BMW IX2 and Lexus RZ450e).

Aside from the EV infrastructure, everything in Norway “just worked” and the smoothness of living there stood out enough to catch our attention. For example, (1) age verification at grocery stores had optional automation with a fingerprint instead of waiting for the clerk to check your ID (you have to be 14+ to buy energy drinks like Red Bull), (2) every parking lot auto-scanned your license plate and made payment/tracking easy or fully automated, and (3) every home, public greenspace, or school, or anywhere with a patch of grass had an automated lawn mower running around for them (think Roomba but for grass).

Why not automate all of the tedious day-to-day activities?

No traffic lights

This one is a bit odd, but we hardly saw any traffic lights anywhere in Norway. So much so that it’s making it into this blog post. From cities (Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen) to more rural towns (Reine, Flåm, Bodø), they just weren’t there. We’re not sure if it was an artifact of population density, natural traffic flow, or something else, but we can count on two hands how many traffic lights we saw after driving all over the country for 17 days.

There is one weather app that works and you've probably never heard of it

Apple weather failed us more times than we could count early on. We asked one of our kayaking guides what they use and we learned about an app called “YR”. It’s Norway centric and wow it was accurate. Down to the hour, it showed us what rain, cloud coverage, and sun would look like on even our most remote hikes and with remarkable accuracy. No 5% chance of rain turning into a suprise downpour; if the app said a specific spot would be raining in 5 hours, we brought raincoats and were thankful we did. We planned the rest of our days around what YR predicted and it didn’t fail us once.

Party tunnels

Small quirky note, but Norway has incredible tunnel infrastructure. We passed through at least a dozen 15+ km long tunnels that burrowed through mountain after mountain. On the long tunnels, and usually around the quarter or halfway markers, the tunnel would widen out a bit into a giant bubble shape, and they had bright colors illuminating the high ceilings and sides of the tunnel. We could see them coming from about a kilometer out so we always put on party music as we passed through them. They were oddly exciting to drive through. Back in NY they certainly could make the Lincoln Tunnel a bit more entertaining.

Getting started

17 days in Norway barely scratched the surface of what might be one of the most picturesque outdoor adventure wonderlands. We kicked off our trip in Oslo, meandered through the Lofoten Islands, then zipped through Trondheim and wrapped up with a week-long road trip around the National Parks surrounding Bergen.

Our first 8 days of this outdoor adventure were spent without our bags (hiking shoes, coats, toiletries, etc.) after the airline misplaced them between Amsterdam and Oslo. We were optimistic SAS would have our bags back in our hands 24 hours later, but that optimism quickly dwindled as we feverishly refreshed our bags’ AirTag locations but saw no changes.

After 24 hours in Oslo and still bagless, we hopped on a flight to the Lofoten Islands and found a “Sport 1” store in the area with enough discounted items to pull together some hiking gear that we could wash in the sink overnight if needed.

The Lofoten Islands & The Midnight Sun

The Lofoten Islands are part of the Arctic Circle and from May through July, they experience 24/7 sunlight. The night we arrived, we threw our circadian rhythms out the door and stayed up until 3 am walking around and looking at the overnight golden hours. Over the next 5 days, we were hiking from 1 am to 5 am, eating cinnamon rolls around the clock, and trying to soak in every last bit of this surreal experience. We were awake for every hour of the day at some point during our Lofoten Island adventure. Midnight hikes resulted in perfect "golden hour" lighting and our bodies were constantly trying to figure out what to do. Was it time to drink an apricot sugar-free Red Bull, try and catch some sleep, or carry forward as if it were 10 am? The answer to all of these questions was "yes", we just weren't sure which response our bodies would select each time.

So while Tyler was chugging apricot sugar-free Red Bull and Makenna was eating more Swedish candy than was healthy, we quickly lost track of what day it was. Who needs sleep when you can see the sun glistening over the mountains and ocean at 3 am?

While we felt invincible, the midnight hikes did eventually catch up to us and the ~3-4 hours of sleep wasn't cutting it. Our last 24 hours in Reine teased us with pristine conditions, so we went all in on maximizing our time outside. While Lofoten is beautiful, it’s still frequently rainy in the summer, and cloud coverage can sneak in for days at a time. To take advantage of the fully unobstructed sun after a full day of exploring the town, we hiked Ryten, a cliffside hike with views of pastures on one side and an Arctic beach on the other, from 6 pm - 10 pm. We drove back to our hotel to refill our water, have a pastry (read: 4 pastries), and then turned around to hike Reinebringen from midnight to 4:30 am. There was no stopping at that point; we showered, packed, and then proceeded directly to our 7 am ferry ride back to Bodø.

Once on the ferry, hoodies were up and AirPods were in. It took Tyler less than 90 seconds to fall straight to sleep for the entirety of the 4-hour ferry. As drowsy-eyed as we were, we managed to get in the car, find a free parking spot in town, and sleep another 4 hours in the rental car before grabbing a burger and heading to the airport for our flight to Trondheim. Needless to say, we are not invincible and the human body does require sleep even with the magic of 24 hours of natural light.

Throughout our time on the Lofoten Islands we also did a handful of excursions from kayaking to rib boat adventures looking for sea eagles and fjords. The water activities did not disappoint. When else do you get to put on these fashionable water suits and watch eagles with 6+ ft wingspans hunt for fish in the water just a few feet away from you?

Trondheim and Bergen Pitstops

Following the Lofoten Islands, we planned to have a few days in both Trondheim and Bergen. While both cities were nice, it was more important for us to try and catch up on sleep and finish planning the rest of our Bergen road trip. We both enjoyed walking around the cities, but we were more excited to get back to the mountains and fjords.

Luckily by the time we left Bergen, we were reunited with our lost bags. On the downside, we had to buy hiking shoes, coats, toiletries, and basic thermal layers for our previous 8 days of outdoor activities, and our beloved bags did not have enough space to contain those new items. So our “emergency” 40L expandable bag was now deployed on day 8 of our trip abroad. We figured we’d make it at least a few months before expanding enough to need to use that bag, but c'est la vie.

Flåm

From Bergen, we hopped in our EV car rental and headed out to our first stop, Flåm. Flåm is a top contender on our list of favorite places. Not only did we have a fantastic AirBnB with a killer view, but the town also had a post-hike favorite of ours — kebabs, more baked goods, and top-notch cortados.

Feeling well rested, we decided to hike Bakkanossi, an 11-mile long and 3,500-ft elevation hike through farmland, glaciers, and rock scrambles listed as a local favorite. Comically, we drove through an uphill 14-mile tunnel through a mountain to get to the start of this hike. You can guess which one took us 7 hours and which one took us 20 min. Exhausted at the end of the night, we rewarded ourselves with an amazing sauna and cold plunge session in the fjord the next day.

Bessheim / Jotunheimen National Park

Next up: Jotunheimen National Park. The town of Bessheim was small and we might have seen more cows and sheep than we did people.

We were feeling confident after our Bakkanossi hike, so we decided to tackle the Besseggen hike. Based on our research, Bessenggen and Jotunheimen go hand-in-hand. While we read about all the logistics of the 9-mile hike and the ferry required to get to the starting point, we let all knowledge of preparedness flee after we saw the weather looked clear and comfortable (i.e., we’ll be fine). We showed up late on the morning of the hike almost missing our scheduled ferry, with a single backpack carrying 2 liters of water, 2 protein bars, and a windbreaker for each of us. Just take a moment to look at the sign at the trailhead.

Oops. We failed to recall this specific hike has its own weather patterns (and we didn't check YR that morning). In Makenna's own words, "The hike kicked my butt." About a third of the way in, we called it quits. Cold and wet from the wind and rain, we slowly made the descent back to the starting point. Don't worry, she still treated herself to a hot chocolate once we got back to the ferry port to cheer herself up. Nonetheless, we still captured some good views so it wasn’t wasted energy.

Geiranger

Our hotel was a little oasis for one night and served the best strawberries we had ever tasted. It was called the Grande Fjord Hotel if you're ever in the area and looking for a comfortable place to stay.

We spent the next day exploring the Geirangerfjord and admiring the dozens of waterfall streams surrounding the fjord. We also had a little encounter with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher at the local chocolate shop. By encounter we mean we saw them a few feet away from us. It looked like Mila saw that we recognized her and she quickly pulled her jacket up to obfuscate her face. They did not want to be noticed and we don’t blame them.

Loen

Our final stop before heading back to Bergen was in the town of Loen. We found a short but steep hike in Oldedalen Valley and a surprisingly decent sushi spot in town before it was time to head back to Bergen for our next flight to Copenhagen. Had we not been severely over budget at this point we probably would have done some more excursions (Via Ferrata, paragliding, or any number of guided outdoor activities), but we decided to take it easy on the wallet and stick to self-guided hiking.

On our way back to Bergen, we stopped by a small town called Undredal, known for making brown cheese, or “Brunost” (only recognized as cheese within the Scandinavian region). If you aren't familiar, brown cheese is produced by caramelizing the whey generated during standard cheese production. We briefly had brown cheese in Geiranger, but it was covered in chocolate and we honestly thought it was caramel. After passing it at every breakfast counter for the last 16 days in Norway, we figured we had to try it before leaving the country. Our two cents on it: it was good (sweeter than you’d think), but one or two slices is enough and you can't think about the color too much.

Closing out Norway

So how do we wrap all of this up? Norway was gorgeous and a calm yet adventurous way to kick off our sabbatical. It was green and lush, friendly, clean, and genuinely interesting to see, and it allowed us to quickly transition from thinking about unread emails to exploring a new part of the world either of us had yet to see.

According to Apple Health metrics, our daily average walking and running distance doubled, our daily average active calories burned more than doubled, and our daily average flights of stairs soared from 12 floors to 151 floors (including off days!). We’re excited for what’s next and we’ll have shorter and more frequent posts coming soon!