Norway Travel Guide

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Norway is a land for nature lovers, with breathtaking fjords and glaciers, summer's midnight sun and a sparsely populated wilderness.

There are opportunities to indulge in skiing, fishing and rock-climbing, while the less energetic can simply marvel at the beauty of the Norwegian countryside, with its countless steep-sided valleys, high mountain lakes and unforgettable views.

Norway's four major cities offer distinct appeal - Oslo is the present-day capital and financial center, Bergen is a picturesque former Hanseatic trading port and gateway to Fjordland, Stavanger is the focal point of the Norwegian oil industry, and Trondheim is a long-established center of Christian pilgrimage, and more recently, technical research.

Geography

Norway is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by Finland, the Russian Federation and Sweden, to the south by the Skagerrak (which separates it from Denmark) and to the west by the North Sea. The coastline is more than 20,000km (12,400 miles) long, its most outstanding feature being the fjords. Most of them are between 80- to 160km- (50 to 100 miles) long, and are often very deep and surrounded by towering mountains. Much of northern Norway lies beyond the Arctic Circle and the landscape is stark. In the south, the landscape consists of forests with many lakes, rivers and mountains.