Western Norway Road Trip (4) Nærøyfjorden

Last modified 21.02.2022 | Published 11.08.20122010's, Norway, Norway Road Trips

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Nærøyfjorden is one of the most spectacular of all Norwegian fjords. It is narrow, the mountains rise vertically up high above the deep blue sea, and there are scattered hamlets and farms where humans for centuries have tried to make a living.

UNESCO writes about the “west Norwegian fjord landscape, which stretches from Stavanger in the south to Åndalsnes, 500 km to the north-east.” The UN organisation has placed two of the fjords on its World Heritage List representing this landscape. One of them is the Nærøyfjord which we’re going to visit today. Before describing this exciting day you may want to read my short introduction to the fjords as such.

Let’s go

We had spent the morning hours of this fine day in Solvorn before getting in the car for the third of our four day car trip in Western Norway. Read about Solvorn here.

We backtracked part of the route from yesterday, past Sogndal to the old trading town of Kaupanger. We joined the long queue on the quay for the car ferry. Together with mostly other tourists we rolled on board and went up on the sun deck.

Our ferry would take us across the Sognefjord into the Aurlandsfjord. That fjord continues to Flåm but a branch turns south and ends at the village of Gudvangen. This last stretch of 17 km is the Nærøyfjord. The entire ferry journey would take a bit more than two hours.

I don’t really know what to say but this: Enjoy the pictures and the video.

This was my second time on Nærøyfjorden, fourteen years after the first. I made another video from my first visit going the other way, from Gudvangen to Kaupanger.

And then what happened?

In Gudvangen we left the ferry and returned to Voss which we had passed two days before. There we took another national tourist road to the Hardangerfjord, crossed it and continued along the fjord to its very end at Eidfjord. Going further inland we ended up for the night at one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Norway, the Vøringsfossen. I will describe it in my next blog post from this trip.

Read more

This road trip is described in a series of entries:

(1) – Stavanger to Lærdal
(2) – Lærdalsøyri
(3) – Solvorn
(4) – Nærøyfjorden
NEXT: (5) – Vøringsfossen and Hardanger

There are many more relevant articles on this blog. Read my introduction to Western Norway, the fjord country. These posts all have videos describing them in more detail. The videos are collected in a Norway playlist on my YouTube channel.