6 Things You Need to Know Before Going on a Road Trip in Norway
If there’s one European country that is amazing for road tripping, it’s Norway. Snowcapped mountains, icy blue fjords and movie-like views for miles and miles: that’s the land of the giants. You won’t be bored for a minute while driving through these magnificent landscapes. If you’re planning your road trip, here are some tips that will help you along!
1. Don’t just consider mileage, think about driving time too
What struck me most about my first road trip in Norway, was how different driving out there is. We’d mapped out the places we would visit beforehand, checked out the kilometers between and thought we were good to go. Boy, we were wrong. We ended up driving most of our holiday, not spending very much time in the locations we actually wanted to visit. And while the drives are extremely beautiful, they are also very long. On most Norwegian roads, the speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour (which is about 50 mph), even when you’re driving on a “highway”. There’s barely any difference between normal roads with the same speed limit. This means that travelling 200 kilometers through Norway can easily take up to four hours instead of two or less. Next to that, although most roads are in good condition, you often pass villages where the speed limit is even lower or mountain passes where you definitely won't get to the speed limit of 80 kph because that would be a suicide mission in this kind of terrain. It also makes driving very tiring. So before you head out, make sure you've taken into account the actual driving time so you can enjoy your holiday to the fullest. And while you're there, make sure you are fully rested before getting on the road. Norway is the one place I ever got tired behind the wheel and I had to stop several times to take a nap.
2. Go get dinner in a gas station
This might seem a slightly weird piece of advice, because, generally, gas station food isn't considered a good meal in most European countries. Well, I've found that this definitely isn't true for Scandinavian countries. Most gas stations offer burgers, hot dogs and other types of food that are actually quite tasty and not very expensive (in contrast to most restaurants, where you might have to offer up your kidney if you want to pay your bil). My personal favourite is the cheese and bacon hotdog from Circle K (chain of gas stations). Sauces like ketchup and mustard are free of charge. And while you're there, you should try the waffles! You'll find them in most gas stations!
3. Freedom to roam
In Scandinavia, there's this law called "Allemansratten", translated "freedom to roam". This basically means you can camp anywhere you like, within a few basic rules:
You have to stay at least 150 meters away from houses, farms, cabins and other inhabitant places
The freedom to roam goes for public land, private land is off limits.
Campfires are only allowed from October to March, unless "it obviously cannot lead to a fire". ("Forskrift om brannforebygging")
You can only stay in the same spot for one night, so you cannot build a basecamp or anything like that. If you want to, you have to ask permission from the landowner
The freedom to roam only goes for people hiking and camping in tents, with a camper you can only park and camp in the designated areas
Do stay away from backcountry roads though. It's not because you're allowed to camp anywhere, you're allowed to drive anywhere. Driving onto backcountry roads is illegal in Norway and can get you a very high fine! This goes for campers, cars AND motorcycles.
4. Midnight sun
If you travel to Norway in summer, don’t forget to bring blinds or curtains for you car. I travel in a converted campervan and I usually don’t bring them because I don’t sleep with my curtains closed at home either and I just don’t bother with putting them up (and light doesn’t wake me up). But in the Northern countries, it doesn’t get dark between the end of may and the end of July. You basically have 24 hours of sunlight, which is called the midnight sun. If you are someone that needs total darkness to fall asleep, definitely bring covers for your windows or bring an eyemask to cover your eyes.
5. Register your car on autopass.no
Norway has an ingenious toll system. Along the highways and on certain passes and tunnels, there are cameras installed that scan your license plate and digitally collect information to send you an invoice. This means no annoying toll boots or queues and fluent traffic. I do advise you to register your car on autopass.no, because this is usually cheaper than if you don’t. Your car’s emission is taken into account when calculating your final bill, so when you have an electric car it would definitely be advantageous to register. If you don’t, you’ll automatically get charged the maximum amount. It can also take months for the invoice to arrive, since they have to manually look up the owner and address of the car. But don’t be fooled, the invoice will definitely come, even if it’s a year after your journey. If you want to avoid toll ways, just stay off of the bigger highways like the one between Oslo and Lillehammer and between Oslo and Larvik/Kristiansand. The smaller “highways” usually don’t have tolls. Bridges and tunnels you are harder to avoid, since they’re usually the only way to get from point A to point B without driving around for hours.
6. Ferries
Traffic in Norway is usually quite fluent and travelling is easy due to the clear signage and information next to the roads. What had me confused several times though, is the ferry system. Mainly because there isn’t a system. For some ferries, you can buy tickets in advance and you just have to be there on time. For other ferries, you have to wait in line and your car gets registered via camera, with the invoice following later on. In the latter case, you want to be at the port a couple of hours in advance, because some ferries are rather small and not everybody can get onto the boat. And even if you’re in the cue, you won’t even know whether you’ll get onto it or not. Therefore, it’s important to do some research before you get there, to see if you can buy tickets in advance or not, how often the ferry goes and whether or not there are other options besides the ferry that don’t take hours to go around.
The ferry schedule you usually find on the website of the specific ferry route. Don’t be surprised though if it shows you a schedule from two years before. Normally, it’s still accurate and the only thing that doesn’t check out is the dates of holidays on which the ferry sails according to the sunday schedule. If you want to travel to Norway off season, take into account that some ferries won’t go at all.
