If you think I’m only ever positive about Norway, this blog about Geiranger will come as a surprise. What I sometimes find a bit hard, you see, is when picturesque places get flooded by mass tourism. After all, I don’t go there to look at other people, I go there to look at nature!
Last week, this article called for an end to the over-the-top Photoshopping of photos of Norway, for fear of disappointing tourists. That article is the reason I’m writing this blog post. Because the sun doesn’t always shine in Norway. You can’t always see the northern lights in Norway. And not everything in Norway is perfect.
Although 99.9% of our experiences in Norway have been fantastic, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll be disappointed at some point during an awesome vacation. And that’s exactly what happened halfway through our first road trip through Norway, when we arrived in Geiranger. Of course, all travel guides always try really hard to show the very best of a country (or in this case, a village), but we had actually found that Norway is EVEN more beautiful in reality than in the pictures. Until we arrived in Geiranger..
How do you get to Geiranger?
We drove from Sandane past Stryn and via the Gamle Strynefjellsveg (awesome!) to Grotli, with Geiranger as our final destination. From Stryn you drive up into the mountains, where at some point you’ll come across a turnoff for ‘Gamle Strynefjellsvegen’. Take this turnoff and follow it all the way to Grotli. The turnoff is very easy to miss, so it’s best to set your navigation to Gamle Strynefjellsvegen so you don’t miss it. After that you can set your navigation to Grotli; this road just takes you straight ahead until you cross road no. 15. From there you can follow the 15 for 40 kilometers and then the 63 to Geiranger.
The pearl of the North
Geiranger is a small village in the county of Møre og Romsdal, on the Geirangerfjord. Since 2005, this fjord has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List. According to Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor, Geiranger is the #1 spot in Norway. So every summer, ‘The pearl of the North’ is visited by more than 150 cruise ships carrying around 700,000 tourists. And the tiny, cute village is TOTALLY unsuited for that.
Our first glimpse of the cute little cluster of buildings was from the famous viewpoint at the tip of the fjord. The first thing that stood out was the three gigantic cruise ships, whose exhaust fumes left a misty haze in the valley. Not the towering mountains, the pearly blue fjord or the bright green meadows. No, the first thing that stood out was the load of tourists bobbing around in the fjord.
And that’s such a shame! Because yes, it really is a very special view – if you can look over all the heads of the swarm of tourists. In high season, entire tour buses are unloaded at the viewpoint and it’s a struggle to get a spot at the railing. As soon as everyone has taken a selfie with the fjord, they get back on the bus and the whole crowd is unloaded again down in the village.. After camping out in the mountains for 5 days, we found it hard to adjust to the masses of people.
The Bold and the Beautiful
All summer long, Geiranger is flooded by gigantic cruise ships that unload heaps of tourists, let them trample the village flat and load them back up again. From the authentic, cute Norwegian terraces you can sip a (WAY TOO EXPENSIVE) glass of wine while reading along with the subtitles of The Bold and the Beautiful on a gigantic cinema screen on deck 1. We could laugh about it a little, but in the end, this isn’t what we came to Norway for.
A short walk through the village means that within 50 meters you’ll trip 10 times over the flip-flops of a tourist with a way too expensive camera who has suddenly stopped to photograph a buttercup. Other than that, all the village has to offer is a handful of hotels, a few houses and a gigantic pile of souvenir shops. Trolls and Norwegian flags are flying at you from every direction here.
RIB boat fjord safari
We hoped that the RIB boat fjord safari we had booked earlier (with Geiranger Fjordservice) would ease the pain a little. And luckily, it did. In our bodysuits we paraded through the village as if Geiranger belonged to us. And that’s exactly how everyone looked at us, too.
I can highly recommend the safari. Racing across the water a bit in a way too small boat that makes super sharp turns.. If you love adventure, you’re going to love this! The Seven Sisters (the most famous waterfall in Geiranger) were unfortunately a bit shy when we were there, but it was still very special to see. And apparently there are porpoises swimming around here! We didn’t see them, but if you’re lucky you might catch a glimpse of them.
Shameless dining
After we stepped back ashore with grins from ear to ear, we raced back to our hotel to keep our good mood intact. The highlight of the day? The dinner that followed. We ended up at Olebuda Gjorvahaugen, a 4.5-star restaurant in the center of Geiranger. It was very quiet, and when we saw the prices we understood why, but the food was HEAVENLY. The only reason we would ever go back to Geiranger is this restaurant. Okay, and maybe the fact that the staff served us svele for dessert especially for us, even though it isn’t on the menu at all. They even went to get it from a nearby little coffee bar. Classy!
The biggest disappointment in Norway
With full bellies and a healthy glow on our cheeks from the glasses of wine at 18 euros each, we slunk back to our hotel once more. Geiranger couldn’t tempt us into an evening walk around the area. Luckily, our hotel was just a little way outside the village, wrapped in a strip of fog, so we could put our blinkers on, look the other way and enjoy the view over the fjord.
Geiranger is the place Norway has sacrificed to mass tourism, so that everything else can stay beautiful, clean and unspoiled. All the cruise ships and tour buses are lumped together there, so that you and I can experience all the beautiful remote spots in all their purity. It absolutely deserves the title ‘pearl of the North’, but if you ask me, it would be better to change that to ‘one of the pearls of the North’.
And while the big cruise ships pumped their dirty fumes into the cute little place and The Bold and the Beautiful had reached its dramatic finale on ‘deck 1’, the sun set in Geiranger – the biggest disappointment in Norway.
Personal travel advice
Would you like help putting together your dream trip to and through Norway? Or would you rather hand over the organizing of your trip completely? Get in touch with me and soon you, too, will be Lost in Norvana!
