The Oslo-Bergen Railway

Norway could easily claim the title of the world’s most deceptively big country, so why not take it all in at a leisurely pace with one of the world’s best train journeys?

The opening country of east-central Norway *© Matthew Walsh / Finding Earth 2024*

It’s far from a postcard start to the journey. The Bergensbanen trundles its way out of Oslo Central Station heading shortly west and then northbound. This is, after all, Norway’s urban heart. In Oslo, the surrounding region and around the Oslofjord, there lives almost a third of the country. Though the cities of Oslo, Drammen and Hønefoss appear quaint, clean and friendly, the tame landscape struggles to cast much more of a spell than the typical scene through any European train window. I am eager to push on into truly unique territory.

Onwards and upwards

The Scandinavian sun is beaming, yet still hanging low at the very height of summer, as the train pulls out of Hønefoss. West is now the only way to go. The land soon opens up, palms to the sky, as the city is left behind. Buildings become fewer and towns seem to shrink with each passing mile. I sit and watch the cars alongside as they navigate long and winding roads that would make even The Beatles jealous.

For now, I pass through modest landscapes. The train follows a wide, flat river valley, it will be the last part of Norway that looks liveable for a while. Any mountains here look small and climbable. It’s quite easy to imagine why Norwegians have such an active outdoor lifestyle as I look out on to each hill, longing to see what lies beyond.

Norway seems impossible to navigate. If you take a look at a map, the country is shredded along its edges, with deep fjords scraped away by eons of ice wandering its way from the mountain peaks to the sea. And the mountains themselves, folding and crumpling the green and ice-white land between each fjord. The train ploughs on anyway. Undeterred. It begins to twist its way along steep lakesides and through the feet of mountains that grow larger with every mile.

It's starting to feel like we don’t belong here. The mountainsides are becoming forested, the farms are gone, the houses tiny, the train huge, stretching out a hundred metres ahead of me as I watch forward through the window. This is territory for bear more than banen.

Each bend rewards me with a view more spectacular than the last. I almost don’t notice the fringes of snow as the train pulls into the canary yellow and distinctly Scandi station.

Snow? It was 25 above when I boarded in Oslo. The station sign “Gol 207,4 m.o.h.” confuses me a little at first. “Gol” is the town name but a quick google while I have signal tells me the “m.o.h.” I’ve been seeing is altitude. I’ve never known a country express the height of each station, but I suppose in the home of skiing it has relevance. And skiing country this is.

Even in the height of summer, Hardangervidda remains snowbound *© Matthew Walsh / Finding Earth 2024*

On top of the world

Gol turns out to be the start of something truly spectacular. I am now mostly away from civilisation it feels, a strange feeling while still sitting on a modern train with order-at-seat catering. The landscape is now all mountain, a couple of powerlines and the snaking track ahead are the only reminders of Norway the nation rather than Norway the landscape. The snow patches are growing. The trees that lined the lowland valleys and riverbanks are all but gone too.

After the stop at Geilo, one of Norway’s premier skiing resorts at nearly 800 “m.o.h.”, the tracks roll into the Hardangervidda National Park. It’s a mythical landscape, there’s no other word for it. Mythical. So mythical in fact that it was chosen to play the role of an ice planet in 1980’s Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back.I have to admit, a large part of me became a giddy 12-year-old as the train pulled into Finse, the highest point on the Norwegian rail network and the filming site for one of modern cinema’s classics.

Beyond Finse, as the track winds down slowly from a lofty 1222m above sea level. The Hardangervidda plateau becomes pocked with ice-blue and sometimes iced over lakes. I gawp out the window at fairy pools being fed by low, gurgling waterfalls as bite-sized Norwegian seasonal houses dot the landscape in a pleasant way, non-disruptive, a part of nature rather than a slight on it. In places, placid lakes give way to riotous rivers flowing bright as gemstones. Coming down from the Hardanger plateau is a highlight of the whole journey. Here, the landscape evolves from ice-capped and flat rock, to lakes, fairy pools and rivers, and finally to watch it grown green and steep, veined with narrow waterfalls as the train reaches Myrdal.

Back down to Earth

“This station for the Flåm Line”, comes the announcement. Across the platform is a vintage looking train, a deep forest green, sits surrounded by the greatest throng of people I have seen since Oslo. This is the Flåmsbana, a tourist railway dubbed “the best train journey in the world”. It would have a hard time convincing me after this.

After the train empties considerably, the draw of the Flåmsbana too much for most, understandably, the journey begins to return to the human world from the fantasy of the high Hardangervidda. We flow past ever-widening rivers and villages made entirely of summerhouses. At Voss, Norway’s “adrenaline capital”, the train is greeted by base jumpers and paragliders and the land opens up once more. Time for more tunnels.

The last few miles of patchwork darkness and light as the train flits from tunnel to tunnel brings with it a sense of an odyssey ending. Time between stations becomes shorter and platforms become busier until, after one final long tunnel, I am greeted by a sign. Velkommen til Bergen. Welcome to Bergen, gateway to the fjords. Time to stretch my legs.