Dispatch from Norway
Road-tripping to the fjords, saunas, and fish markets of Norway, fueled by Kvikk Lunsj and hot dogs
Before we begin, a little housekeeping. If you’ve been a subscriber, you know the drill: This newsletter is rather long (truly an understatement) and also quite photo-heavy, so you would do well to open it on a browser or in the Substack app, lest elements get lost.
The Roberts know road trips. In 2016, we took two months to drive across the States, hauling our Airstream to an insane number of the country’s national parks, and last year we road-tripped northern Scotland, navigating the treacherous Isle of Skye roads before returning to Fife for my graduation. This month, our family trip landed us in Scandinavia, where my mom played master trip planner once again and we rented a trusty Volvo to take us around the fjords and through the pine forests along Norway’s west coast.
Over ten days, we roamed cities, dipped ourselves into glacial fjords, sampled the seasonal produce, committed to the Nordic Cycle, ate a weird amount of hot dogs, relished a never-setting sun, and stayed in a truly magical forest hotel. I left Norway with visions of spruce tip syrup, silky strawberry ice cream cones, and construction plans for a turf-roofed sauna. It was a dreamy adventure, and this is my travelogue of sorts, if only to capture a little bit of the wonder.
Oslo is a quiet, nearly suburban-feeling city. From the clean lines of the Opera House to the green parks with slides set into the hillside, everything felt intentional, tidy, and beautifully ordinary. It was easy to wander into the city’s residential outskirts, passing by the masses gathered outside to eat at Hrimnir Ramen or at riverbank bars like Blå. Floating saunas dot the city harbor; Salt boasts a lineup of summer DJs to soundtrack theirs. Alas, there was no one on the decks for our two brief days. Wandering westward towards the university, there are indie coffee shops like Fuglen and bookstores like Tronsmo Bokhandel. Our favorite coffee and breakfast spot was Åpent Bakeri; there are several scattered across the city.
We opted for a visit to the National Museum by virtue of the immaculately designed signage for an exhibit on the “new Nordic” era of fine dining. The museum is also home to the iconic painting The Scream by Edvard Munch, plus about 400,000 other pieces of art—it’s massive. We floated through the maze of rooms before catching a tram to Frogner Park, a sculpture park whose hundreds of granite and bronze statues are Gustav Vigeland’s life work.
Given the generally unfavorable attitude surrounding Norway’s food scene, we were surprised by wonderful food nearly across the board. Oslo’s restaurants have garnered many a Michelin star, so I found middle ground at Smalhans, sitting pretty on Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list—lauding affordable spots—for two years now. They offer four- and seven-course set menus: Standouts included a bright green salad with peas and a fresh Norwegian strawberry dessert with panna cotta and basil pavlova.
If you’re not keen on Norwegian eats, finding a food hall like Mathallen Oslo is a perfect solution. Oslo is quite walkable, but their public transport is incredible (of course). We bought ticket passes for the bus and tram, yet never saw a single person checking tickets, and so decided that Norway has some enviable honor system or something. They would.
As for libations, Himkok is an aquavit distillery and world-renowned cocktail bar whose entrance is unassuming to the point of invisibility. Their menu is wildly inventive; I had a foamy concoction with sea buckthorn. Or there’s the Svanen Bar, housed in a historic pharmacy that dates back to the late 1800s, which served me an oolong iced tea cocktail. I’m currently obsessed with ultra-fresh, crisp drinks; this made the list.
While walking off the jet lag, I made a beeline for Norway Designs, whose lower level is a treasure trove of stationery, multi-use paper products, and niche desk tools. I also loved popping into Platebutikken Big Dipper, a record shop with an expansive collection of both Norwegian and English music. Little gems like these, in conjunction with the green spaces and community-centric eateries, made Oslo feel like a livable, homey city, and that’s always something I love.
I typically reserve hot dog consumption for blazing-hot baseball games and impromptu campfires, but Norway has a surprising love for polser, and now, so do I. City kiosks provided quick, curb-sitting lunches, while a ferry kiosk dished out communal fried onion toppings and a fjord view. Syverkiosken in Oslo used both lefse flatbread and a regular bun in addition to loading it with potato salad, while Bergen’s 3-Kronnen Hot Dog doled out reindeer hot dogs topped with mustard and lingonberry sauce. Hot dogs certainly aren’t three kroner in this economy, but they remain a cheap, delicious novelty perfect for breaking up an afternoon exploring the city.
From Oslo, we drove six hours north through valleys and past oblong bodies of water, pausing to break up the drive in the town of Lillehammer. After an incredible fish soup (to share the advice I was given, order fish soup anywhere and everywhere in Norway—it’s almost always fantastic), we ducked into Lillehammer Bakeri to acquire a large glazed citrus bun sprinkled with borage before heading to the Maihaugen. This open-air museum showcases over 200 traditional Norwegian buildings from the 1400s, from a classic stave church to bath houses with turf roofs.
This was almost certainly where I really fell in love with the green roofs. Made from birch bark, sod, and a variety of grassy, mossy plant varieties, they are fantastic insulators and absolutely magical to look at. Homes built with dark wood, the result of burning or carbonization for preservation, contrast elegantly with soft edges and variegated greens of their roofs, and each and every red barn that dots the countryside sports a grassy top.
Continuing our trek northwest, we drove to Åndalsnes for a hike and dinner before heading to Vestnes, just to stay the night. Because of the country’s positioning, summer means sunset around one a.m. This magical situation allowed for eight p.m. hiking in Åndalsnes (and nighttime walks everywhere else) partway up Romsdalseggen Ridge. Revelling in an elongated, hours-long dusk is, to me, one of life’s greatest joys.
Initially, the ten-day forecast called for overcast skies and lots of rain. Once there, it was more like a minor heatwave and blazing sun. There were only a few mornings of drizzly weather, but despite the heat, we got lucky with cooler weather up in Storfjord, so my sweaters were not packed in vain. My J. Press Shaggy Dog, a few J. Crew cashmeres and a linen button-down, Vuori hiking joggers, long-sleeves from Kule, tees and tanks from Buck Mason, and a pair of boyfriend jeans were really all I needed to go from city exploring to mountain hiking. A rain jacket is essential, too!
Checking into the Storfjord Hotel, a thirty-room hotel perched on a hill overlooking the eponymous fjord, was pure magic. This slice of heaven on earth, nestled in a million-treed forest on protected land, is perfectly curated to complement Norway’s natural aesthetics; dark wood buildings with soft green roofs, rooms with red doors and forest views, and fires tended in braziers on the walkway each evening to suffuse everything with the smell of woodsmoke.
Storfjord certainly falls into the quiet luxury category, but it’s classic and cozy, too. A fire is lit in the dining room for breakfast, where offerings range from lox to Norwegian pancakes. There are two libraries in which to sit and read or lay out a board game, and if you’re lucky, you’ll stumble in while they’re serving midday cookies. Their house cocktail is made with gin and birch syrup and probably sorcery. When not admiring the sprawl of mountains from the Adirondack chairs that dot the hilly lawn, you can sweat it out in their gorgeous sauna or else take a hot tub soak on a deck surrounded by pine trees.
When we weren’t tucked into some nook or cranny of the property, we were hiking up a small mountain through evergreen forests and swaths of ferns that reached past my shins, gathering mountain blueberries and making friends with other hotel guests we ran into on our trek. Or we were hiking down the hill to take a frigid dip in the fjord before dressing for dinner and returning to the boathouse.
As someone who is partial to a semi-unconventional dinner setting, the boathouse meal was divine. Five courses of local seafood, dishes dusted with seaweed salt (some secret recipe from up north, according to the chef), and a cut of reindeer so melt-in-your-mouth divine I was able to briefly forget the time I hiked through snow in the Cairngorms just to see the fellows up close. Between reductions whose names I can’t remember and the conversation with the other diners—don’t you just relish that odd hotel kinship forged from breakfast room run-ins and passing conversations by the pool—it was a meal I won’t soon forget.
Our day spent on the fjord was a collective favorite. Our captain steered us through Storfjord’s pristine sixty-eight miles of water, navigating us close to shore to spot harbor porpoise and to recount Viking raids of fjord farms. Mountains teeming with greenery right up to their snow-capped tops rose straight up from the blue; fjords are characterized by their nearly immediate drops into deep water, and their lack of beachy coastline makes them ruggedly beautiful.
Wind still whipping at our sweaters (anywhere I can wear my Shaggy Dog in the middle of July is the place for me), the captain motored us right into Øye’s one-dock harbor. We were set to take a bike ride—on e-bikes!—along the Norangsfjorden, a winding little road that took us through farmland and past glacial lakes, up against sheer crags and past a small road blockage of roaming sheep.
Cruising (thank you, turbo mode) through this valley, the mountains simply loom in your peripheral vision. Lakes shaded a deep viridian snake along behind stands of pine trees; one is so clear you can see foundations and an entire stone road preserved underwater after a rockslide in the early 1900s decimated a summer mountain farm. Other structures still stand, and the green roofs on stone homes set into the very mountainside seem to melt into the earth.
Kvikk Lunsj provided our biking fuel, plus a punch-like tea that was probably lingonberry or somesuch, and I would very much like to consume all of my electrolytes in this manner from now on. Perhaps our favorite culinary discovery of the entire trip, Kvikk Lunsj, or quick lunch, is effectively a Norwegian Kit-Kat, though you’d be loath to make that comparison to their faces. They were designed as a snack for skiers, and inside the wrapper is printed the adventuring code. “Pack it in, pack it out” is universal, baby.
There were a smattering of raindrops just as we tapped our brakes in front of Union Øye, where we stopped for lunch—a fish soup with creamy broth and a shock of green herb oil—and a quick wander through the historic hotel, through the library, creaky spiral staircases, and past (longing all the way) their selection of Devold sweaters in the lobby.
Stopping off at a fjord farm whose lore involved a jail switch by a pair of twins, there was time for an ice cream and a turn on a rope swing attached to a tree that looks about a thousand years old and which carries you out to kiss the mountain air. Seriously, best day ever.
And best stay ever. 62°Nord is a Norwegian travel company with a portfolio of hotels (Union Øye, Storfjord Hotel, and Hotel Brosundet) and an impressively extensive list of curated adventures around the country, from fjord skiing to open-fire dinners in the forest. I first read about these bespoke travel designers in Yolanda Edwards’ YOLO Journal, and seeing firsthand the lengths they go to curate and showcase the incredible culture and wildness of Norway was truly amazing. If you’re thinking of visiting, whether you’re looking for a super-special stay or a single day adventure for the ages, 62°Nord is the way to go. I love the way they approach travel with care—and beauty, too.
A bustling harbor town, Ålesund is full of character, from its multicolored buildings to the boat owners hosting friends for a drink on their vessels. Climbing the 418 Aksla Viewpoint steps gives you a workout and a lay of the land, and you can reward yourself with a nap in the wildflowers at the Byparken. Trankokeriet Antikk, a hodgepodge antique store where the ocean laps at the windows and an ever-rotating collection of locals congregate at the table, is worth visiting; treasures abound if you look hard enough. Other specialty shops include Sverre Eidsvik, chock full of nautical supplies from signal flags to fishermen’s socks.
Here, we stayed at Hotel Brosundet, another property of 62°Nord. It had a cozy little sitting room that looked out on the water where I loved to get some work done, but the loveliest hour we spent at Brosundet was in the baths. In their sauna area, you can book a bath and soak in bubbles while watching the boats glide in and out of the harbor. It’s like having a personal hot tub surrounded by plumes of bergamont foaming bath. There’s even a little ramp leading down to a floating dock so you can take a plunge.
The hotel has an elevated restaurant and bar, Apotekergata No. 5, plus a finer-dining option at Sjøbua and a cozy coffee shop, Buttiken, but looking for something lighter, we sought out sushi at Zuuma and tapas at Bryt. By the port, Molo Brew is an airy, easygoing brewpub in an old warehouse that offers outdoor seating, good burgers, and a creative list of thirty-something beers on tap. Arkivet Bar and Vino Bar are both right next door to Brosundet for a pre-dinner glass, or you could do as Harris and I did and go in search of bars with billiards. We were semi-successful.
One afternoon, we embarked on a “sea safari” and jetted around Ålesund’s surrounding coast on a kind of speedboat, decked out in what was essentially a spacesuit with googles to shield us from sea spray. If you are afraid of the open water or get seasick, this would be bad news; I, however, had the time of my life. We spotted puffins dipping in and out of their nests with their sweet orange feet and beaks, a highlight, and other seafaring fowl along the rocky coast. The looming crags and salt-loving vegetation reminded me inexplicably of Scotland—but I’ve never seen a lighthouse in Scotland, whereas Norway has them in spades.
Devold, a Norwegian knitwear company, has a flagship factory and outlet in Langevåg, a quick ferry ride from Ålesund. Always eager for a sweater on discount, my mom and I consulted with the hotel concierge, boarded the ferry, then promptly realized their information was outdated and we had exactly thirty minutes to book it to the Devold store, find a sweater, and re-board, or else be stranded in sleepy Langevåg for three hours. In a true display of hustle, my mom and I managed to make the final ferry, jumpers in tow. A word to the wise? Just drive. We later found out we could have driven fifteen minutes out of our way before heading down towards Bergen.
Scandinavians are largely considered to be some of the healthiest, happiest humans, thanks to their moderate lifestyles and their incredible commitment to sustainability. The so-called Nordic Cycle is a major part of wellness culture, involving intervals of time spent in a sauna and cold plunge, which promotes longevity by improving circulation, boosts the immune system, and is ultimately a superb option for recovery and relaxation.
It’s not strictly part of the Cycle, but I think community plays a big role in this practice—communal saunas are everywhere in Norway, and while it’s relaxing to experience alone, sharing the space with a stranger means you can make a new friend or have stimulating conversation while you’re remembering to breathe in the icy water. Physically and mentally, it’s good for you. Dad is already plotting our home system.
Our one day in Loen was full of surprises, namely that we stayed at the Hotel Alexandra, which I can only describe as a mix of Twin Peaks’ Great Northern Hotel and Kellerman’s Resort from Dirty Dancing. I.e., it is a family lodge that’s been run by the same Norwegian family since 1884 and its interior has not yet escaped the vice-like grip of 70s and 80s decor, which honestly delighted me.
Also in Loen is the Skylift, one of the steepest cable cars in the world, which zips you right on up to the top of Mt. Hoven and boasts a view you’re hard-pressed to find elsewhere. We watched paragliders take off and dot the mountains with their multicolored parachutes, then later saw them landing in a field as we embarked on our nightly family stroll.
The family walk transcends space and time, and because of the never-setting sun, we would meander around anywhere from nine to eleven o’clock in the evening. We took a beautiful walk past sprawling apple orchards and a fast-moving brook before climbing up to an old church, watching the waterfalls cascade down the mountains from afar.
Wherever possible, we dipped, and in Loen we had the benefit of both a fjord and a lake. An impromptu kayak around the Lovatnet lake was another collective favorite adventure. We rented kayaks from a roadside cafe of sorts, Loenvatn Holiday Center, and paddling along the edge, found the mountains’ snowy runoff forming frigid waterfalls tucked into mossy boulders and birch trees. I got lucky in locating a pebbly beach on which to wedge my kayak, stripped to my skivvies, and half-dipped in clear, icy mountain runoff.
Our final stop was in Bergen, a city we may have enjoyed more than Oslo simply because we weren’t jetlagged. While the main harborside area is hugely touristy thanks to it being a massive cruise ship port, it’s easy to escape to the fringes and find quiet spots populated by locals. We still loved taking a walking tour of Bryggen, the fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Site, exploring the fish markets, and eating hearty fish dishes at Bryggeloftet Restaurant, but it’s worth noting that the place was packed.
Bergen has some shopping gems, though I may be jaded because at Öy Kaffe & Vintage, I scored an incredible French chore coat which has been on my hunt list. Lot333 was a delightful stop, as the store is stocked with Merz B. Schwanen, Danton, and all manner of Japanese workwear. After browsing, it was time to head over to the aforementioned 3-Kronnen Hot Dog, followed by Hallaisen Ice Cream & Desserts for the best Norwegian strawberry ice cream and tons of other local, niche flavor options.
Wandering uphill and onto the university campus is a sure way to escape the packed streets and see a more residential side of the city. We popped into Apollon Platebar, a super cool record shop and bar, for a few brews before dinner and to wait out a short downpour. Dinner was at Okidoki, where there are four things on the menu on any given day, all of them delicious. Nachos with melty braised beef, sweet potato and chorizo tacos, and a crispy cheesy quesadilla were all beyond stellar. The nachos were so good that we attempted to ask the server how they seasoned them, and several translations later, we decided it must be grillkrydder, a kind of seasoning salt, and proceeded to stock up at the local grocery store.
One of my favorite half-hours of the whole trip (despite us griping at dad because he always takes us on walks that “aren’t that long”) was at the top of Mount Fløyen, where you ride the funicular to the summit and are met with a sprawling view of Bergen and a mess of woodland hiking trails. Taking advantage of the eight o’clock evening light, we walked, dreamlike, through the dense pine stands and carpets of moss.
That sublime walk was the perfect endcap to our ten days, a quiet, beautiful family walk after a day of exploring and a stellar meal. It exemplified all of the things we loved about this country, especially the sheer peacefulness that seems to simply find you, not the other way around. Little pockets of magic really are everywhere. I think we may be back.
Thank you all for reading this month, especially with a bit of a switch-up on the content! It’s been a while since I’ve put out proper travel writing and it’s always such a blast to compile and write.
This trip was too incredible not to pen an entire travelogue, but next month we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming (lots of books and summer produce to discuss). In the meantime, stick out those dog days—might I suggest making bread machine bagels, picking up a gothic summer read, or learning to shuck an oyster—and I’ll see you in September to commence the best four months of the year. Until then, stay cool!
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See you next month!
Sincerely yours,
Grace
What a beautiful story, Grace. Take me back now!
So many good recommendations! I can’t wait to try a few.