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Oslo ⇒ Flåm

The best nordic train journey

By Luke Beard

December 5^th, 2014

First Scandinavia Excursion

I’ve been wanting to visit the nordic regions of Europe for the longest time and this year I choose to finally make the trip for 2 reasons. 1) I wanted a beautiful place to ask the most important person to marry me. 2) A rad place to spend my twenty seventh birthday.

THIS TRAIN JOURNEY

What can I say about this 5 hour train journey? Well for one: Norway’s rail (NSB) service is excellent and their support was incredibly helpful when I had some problem with ticket payment. Second of all, it was absolutely the most beautiful, worth while and amazing train journey I’ve ever been on.

We left from Oslo for Flåm about 8am while it was still dark and cold. Since I’ve been California for over a year I kinda forgot what being cold as hell felt like. Thankfully Norway in the winter was able to remind me just how red cheeks and noses can get , what it’s like to wear my favourite coat and how neat it is to see your own breath.

By the time we left the city limits the sun was coming up over the rural fields and villages.

Slowly DESATURATED

By the time we started hitting the more sparely populated areas the temperature dropped to -5ºC (23°F) and everything started to turn pale with every color starting to take a muted tone.

This couple were pros. They brought their own snacks and slept the whole way. Dude looked like Santa.

My fiancée choose to read up on Norwegian gods during the journey.

Elevenation: Around 3937FT

At it’s highest point the train traveled through a Hoth-esk landscape that was was proudly announced to the train as being 1200 meters above sea level. This was the craziest part of the journey. It felt like a different planet or like a nuclear winter. While very weird to look at the landscapes were stunning and on the way back we actually saw a dude casually kite surfing on a frozen lake in -13ºC.

If you have seen Snowpiercer this part of the journey felt a lot like the scenes of the train barreling through the snow. If you have not seen Snowpiercer then see it, it’s decent.

Myrdal & the Flamsbana

The only change was at Myrdal station. A tiny station that felt like the edge of the world but protip, they have free wifi that’s actually really decent. This stop is so you can board the Flamsbana.

Flamsbana is one of the steepest trainlines in the world on normal tracks, where almost 80% of the journey has a gradient of 5.5% The train journey runs through fantastic nature, past the Rallar road, steep mountains, breathtaking waterfalls, through 20 tunnels and offers so many viewpoints that many feel like travelling multiple times between the mountain and the fjord.

In the span of a single hour, the train takes you from the ocean level at the Sognefjord in Flam, to the mountaintop at Myrdal mountain station on Hardangervidda, 863 meters over the ocean.

Text from: Flamsbana information site.

Contrasts of Cars

To go from a very modern train car that we just had from Oslo to the 60’s feeling cars of the Flamsbana was a really cool change. Plush red seats and wooden panels everywhere, it was clearly a nod at the heritage of the railway but it was all in very high taste.

This train had a short stop to take a gander at some (at the time frozen) waterfalls. You could leave the train and walk around a small platform.

Recovering

Flåm experienced serve flooding in October of 2014 and as we traveled through the villages and valley is was very apparent of how much damage it had caused. But on the much brighter side there was lots of construction and recovery work going on. It was clear there was no time in wasted to fix the damage.