Trolltunga – Norway

Welcome to Norway

The Tongue of the Troll! I didn’t really have too much hiking experience before I had decided to embark on the most extreme hike of my life. I had read plenty about this hike before hand and most experienced hikers were putting this one into the category of a “serious” hike. Somewhere in between Moderate and Extreme! and I have to say that is a highly accurate statement. Located in Tyssedal, Norway, this 20-28km hike is the most gorgeous area of the world I have ever seen. From sheer cliffs with beautiful lake views to enormous waterfalls gushing millions of liters of water per day, I will tell you right now, all of Norway for that matter is one big gigantic gorgeous post card. It doesn’t matter where you are in this country, you will have an epic selfie, worthy of becoming your newest Facebook profile photo. I highly recommend you put Norway on your bucket list. However bring your wallet, because this country is hands down one of the most expensive countries i have ever been to! I hear Greenland is worse, but I digress. Yhe country also seems to have a major anti alcohol agenda. A single beer at the liquor store will cost you between four to seven dollars Canadian. And yes they only sell beer as single bottles in Norway. So when you pick up that 12 pack and look at the price of 44 NOK ($7/Canadian) and think wow that’s cheap, don’t be fooled and end up paying 536NOK ($84 Canadian) for a case like i did! The price is displayed per bottle. That and the fact that the liquer stores all close at 6pm. However you can buy beer at the grocery store or markets, if you wanna get a drink after 6pm and have missed the liquer store. You can go to a bar or pub, but a beer there will be at least double that price. I recommend you visit other European countries, that celebrate your alcoholism first, then use Norway as a half way point in your vacation in order to sober up and enjoy some amazing nature. Go hiking, get back in shape before heading of to another party area of Europe!

Lets dive into Trolltunga. How do you get there? okay, what I recommend and did for myself was, fly into Stavenger, a town of only 150,000 people or so, and spend one night there. Rent a car, get some groceries, either you should bring a tent with you or buy one there, gather up all necessary supplies for the drive and hike and then head out to a small town close to Tyssedal Norway. Personally i stayed in Odda at Odda camping. it was a great little campground full of friendly foreign hikers and expats working in the town for the summer. Great vibes by all. You are going to want to wake up super early in the morning in order to head to the starting point of Trolltunga located in Skjeggedal. you’ll take a right turn in Tyssedal where it says Skjeggedal & trolltunga car park. You are going to want to arrive at the car park no later than 5:30am if you want to have a hope in hell in being able to drive the first 4km of brutal uphill to the upper car park. The upper car park has about 30 car spaces, so the first 30 cars lined up in the queue for that will be the lucky ones. A true case of the early bird gets the worm. This will shave 8km off of your hike. Which is why i said earlier about the hike being anywhere from 20-28km long. Don’t do what i did and arrive at the initial car park and pay thinking it was the upper most car park. I was there at 5am and I could have made the line for the upper car park but thought i was already there. The lower car park im speaking of holds probably around 100 cars. just for your own reference when you arrive. Anyhow long story short, I did the 28km roundtrip hike. The first 4km from the lower car park is walking on paved road up to the upper car park, which is a pretty extreme uphill walk consisting of switch back roads. Youll be questioning whether or not you will be able to do another 24km of this. But dont worry, from the upper car park the real trail begins. Your next 1 km will be slowly rolling up and down hills, just enough to make you start thinking “oh man this hike will be easy from here on out”. however if you think that youll be dead wrong. because the next 3km are pretty extreme up hill mountain side as well. Dont worry there is no rock climbing or cliff face repelling or anything. Im just saying its a daunting elevation gain. In total youll gain 900 meters of elevation before the hike is through. the last 4km are ups and downs which are nice because they even each other out. This is my favorite part of the hike. Especially the last 1km because you know you are getting close and the adrenalin starts flowing heavily and you are so excited you dont even realize how exhausted you are anymore. Then you crest that final hill and it all opens up right in front of your eyes as if you were blind and had a miracle occur and you’ve just seen your very first sunrise! One of the most magnificent views I have ever had bestowed upon me! Trolltunga! spend a few hours there, have some lunch and a rest, take a few hundred pics for editing them later and you are set to turn around and make the long 10-14km hike back to your vehicle. In total i did the hike in about 10 hours. that was with an hour at the rock ledge. But i had a really steady pace going the entire time, with only one quick sandwich break each way.

There are bus transportation options as well from the nearest towns that you can look into if you didn’t want to rent a vehicle. But if you are going to Norway, you’ll want to check out some of the other amazing places and hikes they have available such as Kjeragbolton rock and Preikstolen. These are just two examples you can look into if you havent heard of them before I highly recommend you google them. Unfortunately when I was there it rained everyday except one and that was the day I went to Trolltunga. And be warned, they will shut down these trails if it is raining so you’ll want to have a few days at each place as a buffer zone in case the weather is bad.

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Supplies for hike; at the minimum you should have, a backpack, flashlight, rain jacket and pants, warm sweaters, food for the day, enough water for yourself, hiking boots, hat and sunglasses. They recommend that you should bring walking sticks with you, but those people piss me off so i’m not recommending that at all. You’ll look like a douche with them and nature didn’t intend us to walk with sticks.

There will be a lot of people hiking this trail with you and there will be a long queue for the picture-taking at the rock ledge. So be prepared for that. A lot of people had full camping gear with them. You are allowed to set up a tent along the trail, but off the trail and camp over night. But for god sakes take all of your garbage with you and I don’t think you are allowed to have fires either. Anyhow, if you decide to camp out over night you’ll be able to get great pictures at the cliff at sunrise and sunset. Be careful not to get up in the middle of the night to pee and fall off of a cliff!

Norway

• Nature/Landscape – 10/10
• Food – 4/10 (not very good)
• Price – $$$$$
• Alcohol Price – $$$$$
• Locals – Super friendly and all spoke English