Norway’s engineering feat that connects the country’s south through fjords, glaciers and other natural wonders

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Linking the elegant Norwegian capital to the most picturesque city in the country, the Oslo-Bergen railway has 39 stations, 496 km in length and offers one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world. The feat of engineering that connects southern Norway through fjords, glaciers and other natural wonders GETTY IMAGES On a frosty November morning in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, I boarded a train for the city of Bergen. I’ve been exploring Norway for over a decade and have returned at least a dozen times since my first trip to the country. I’ve been to Norway’s most northerly continental point (Knivskjelodden) and its southern tip (Lindesnes Fyr, where my sunglasses flew off my head, blown out to sea during a gale). I’ve seen walruses and whales. I hiked glaciers in the Svalbard archipelago and stood beside the country’s only palm tree in the seaside town of Kristiansand. I’ve seen the Northern Lights in the winter and attended a midnight sun party in the summer. But, for reasons that defy comprehension, I had never traveled on the Oslo-Bergen railway. And the more I think about it, the weirder it seems. After all, it is often listed among the most beautiful train journeys in the world. Now, finally, I was going to make the trip. I did my research before traveling. I knew, for example, that on a short day in November, only one of the five departure times – 8:25 am – would allow me to cover the entire 496 km journey, lasting six and a half hours, during daylight hours. And I also knew to book a window seat on the left side of the train (or right, if you’re leaving from Bergen), to get the best view of the ride. As the train left the station platform in Oslo, I quickly felt that, without even realizing it, I had been looking forward to this moment for a long time. READ MORE: Sleep at the Theatre: See accommodation inspired by ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ in Paris Experience the high-speed train that connects Rome to Milan in less than 3 hours The Oslo-Bergen Railway traverses some of Norway’s most fascinating scenery GETTY IMAGES In the beginning, there was nothing to suggest the emotions that were waiting for me. But as the train pulled away from the center of the capital, little glimpses emerged: the pleasure boats of Oslofjord; the elegant wooden houses on the slopes of the mountains; and the signs to the Bygdøy peninsula, where museums tell epic tales of exploration and the Viking past. After leaving the towns of Asker and Sandvika behind, the train picked up speed, crossed the fjord and passed quickly through the burgeoning bedroom town of Drammen, its hills dotted with beautiful homes brought about by urban sprawl. Not far west of Drammen, the line turned north. This railway line was so well designed that we changed direction almost without realizing it. One minute we were traveling west and the next minute we were heading north. It was the setting itself that was in charge of announcing the change of direction. Suddenly the hills grew higher and untouched alpine meadows and pine-covered slopes surrounded deep valleys dotted with small villages and isolated farmhouses on the edge of cliffs. Gradually, changes came. The train was slowing down, suggesting subtle increases in altitude. The trails cross the inhospitable plateau of Hardangervidda, more than 1,000 meters above sea level GETTY IMAGES We enter a valley on the edge of a beautiful fjord. We left it through a passage high above the level of the valley. Looking back to where we started, everything felt awfully farther down. Then, without warning, we emerge from a tunnel into the high snows of Hardangervidda, a huge mountain plateau. “I love looking at people’s faces when they take this trip for the first time,” says Jørgen Johansen, who has served the public for Norway’s railway authorities for over three decades. “I never get tired of the view, but the look of wonder on people’s faces is what I appreciate most.” With the train now moving over the largest plateau in Europe – Hardangervidda has around 6,500 km² and an average altitude of over 1,000 meters above sea level –, the trip is a little different. For the first time, we saw that this is the tallest railway trunk in northern Europe and also an engineering marvel. Hardangervidda is one of the oldest geological formations in northern Europe. The plateau, its valleys and contours were shaped millennia ago by glaciers, which carried the frozen waste towards the sea. The path that the weight of ice took thousands of years to travel in the inexorable march of time, Norway’s road and rail builders achieved in a matter of decades. SEE ALSO: Fake restaurant in Montreal, Canada, tops ranking on travel site Videos of disgusting pranks at sushi restaurants generate damage and revolt in Japan The 496 km train journey takes six hours and the railroad is recognized as an engineering marvel GETTY IMAGES When the Bergen line – Bergensbanen, as it is sometimes called – was first studied in 1872, Norway was an impoverished outpost of a more prosperous Europe. The discovery of oil, which would transform the country, would only occur about a century later. At that time, there were many discussions about where the money would come from and the project was started several times. The export of herrings and sardines kept the Norwegian national budget balanced, but there was not enough surplus for infrastructure projects of that scale. Still, work on the line began in 1875, and by 1909 it was complete, with its 39 stations (some of them only for local trains – the intercity service has 21 stops) connected by a tortuous line through one of the most challenging scenarios that you can imagine. Hardangervidda is notoriously inhospitable. The vagaries of sudden weather changes there are just one of the many challenges faced by railroad builders. To find the most direct route possible and make the railway work, 180 tunnels were built – one for every 2.75 km of track. “The Oslo-Bergen railway tells a very Norwegian story,” as Norwegian transport historian Lisbeth Nielsen told me later in Bergen. “There’s always something in the way when you’re moving around Norway,” she says. “If we let the mountains or the fjords stop us, we’ll never get anywhere. Therefore, they built tunnels, highways and railways that seem impossible to other people. It is part of what makes us Norwegians.” The Finse station is the highest on the line, at 1,222 meters above sea level GETTY IMAGES The Geilo ski station, at 794 km altitude, is in the middle of the journey. When we get to that point, the world we’re going through bears no resemblance to what went before it. The scenery is covered in deep snow and Nordic skiers step off the train skiing across the platform and over the mountains. In Ustaoset (990 m altitude) and its icy lake surrounded by huts, the antlers of a reindeer seemed to pierce the blue sky. Norway’s largest group of wild reindeer, numbering 10,000, still roam free in Hardangervidda. We arrive at Finse – the highest station on the line, 1,222 meters above sea level – and a group of hikers in heavy winter clothes board the train, ice still clinging to their beards and boots. “This is my favorite part of the trip,” says Johansen. “Everything is emotion and here in Hardangervidda the carriages are almost silent.” He was right. Nobody opened their mouths, and when the announcer broke the silence to announce that we were approaching Myrdal Station, I wasn’t the only one who was startled by the sudden sound of the human voice. Arrival in Bergen: ‘a fitting end to a fantastic journey’ GETTY IMAGES In Myrdal (867 m altitude), a train was waiting on a spur that is one of the steepest railway lines in the world. From Myrdal to Flåm, down the banks of the Aurlandsfjord (an inner arm of the Sognefjord), the tracks twist and dip through 20 tunnels. The line descends 866 meters in just 20 km, falling at a gradient of 1:18. There seems to be no place a Norwegian train can’t cross. If the climb to Hardangervidda had seemed gradual, the descent to the town of Voss seemed too fast. The snow has subsided. The earth turned green. And the rivers, lakes and fjords were now clear and blue. We had arrived in yet another Norway, where the railway hugged one fjord after another. As it had since we left Oslo hours ago, the railway conquered the challenging topography and surrendered to it. The curves beside the fjords were the most pleasurable moment of the entire trip. Finally, we arrive in Bergen. The train snaked between the seven hills and seven fjords of that graceful city. White-painted wooden buildings clung to the hillsides above the center of town, and autumn leaves added a touch of gold all the way to the imposing train station with its murals. It was a fitting end to a fantastic trip. And in the excitement of arrival I felt like I was in Norway for the first time.

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