The 496-kilometer-long Oslo-Bergen railway line, connecting Norway’s capital Oslo to its most beautiful city, Bergen, is one of the most scenic train routes in the world, with 39 railway stations along the way.
On a cold November morning, I boarded a train from Oslo to Bergen.
I’ve been exploring Norway for over a decade. The first time I came here, the scenery mesmerized me, and since then, I’ve returned at least a dozen times.
I’ve traveled from the far north of Norway (North Cape) to its far south (Lindesnes Lighthouse). I’ve seen whales and river horses. I’ve hiked across glaciers in Svalbard and stood under Norway’s only palm tree in Kristiansand. I’ve witnessed the Northern Lights in winter and partied under the midnight sun in summer.
Yet somehow, I had never traveled on the Oslo-Bergen railway before. The more I think about it, the stranger it seems, because it’s regularly mentioned among the world’s most beautiful train journeys, and I had missed out on it.
I had researched it beforehand. I knew that if I took the 08:25 train on a short November day, I could cover the 496-kilometer journey in six and a half hours of daylight. There are five daily trains from Oslo to Bergen. I also knew that for the best views, it would be better to book a window seat on the left side of the train (right side if traveling from Bergen).
And as the train pulled away from the platform, I suddenly realized that I had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Initially, there wasn’t much to indicate the drama that was about to unfold. As the train moved out of the city center, historical glimpses gradually appeared before my eyes.
Like, the beautifully crafted wooden houses on the hills of Oslofjord. As the train passed through Asker and Sandvika, it picked up speed, crossing the fjord and swiftly moving through the rapidly developing city of Drammen. Its hills were adorned with the most picturesque urban landscapes.
Not far west of Drammen, the railway track turned northward. The track is so expertly laid out that the change in direction is hardly noticeable. One moment we were traveling westward, and the next moment we were heading north, with the expansive views announcing the change as the hills suddenly grew taller, and pristine alpine meadows and pine-covered mountain slopes spread out in the deep valleys, dotted with small villages and distant farmhouses.
The change was gradual. The slow pace of the train indicated that it was now ascending. We passed through a beautiful rocky ravine into a valley. As we emerged from it, we crossed a high pass, looking back to see everything far below us that we had just left behind.
And then, without any clear warning, we emerged from a tunnel into a snow-covered landscape, and we were on the vast Hardangervidda plateau.
Jørgen Johannesen told me, “I like to see the faces of people traveling this route for the first time.”
Johannesen has worked for the Norwegian rail authorities for over three decades. He said, “I never get tired of these views, but it’s the look of surprise on people’s faces that I like the most.”
The train was now on Europe’s largest and highest plateau, Hardangervidda. This plateau spans almost 6,500 square kilometers and is elevated above sea level. As we arrived here, the journey became entirely different. The realization set in that this is Northern Europe’s highest mainline railway and a marvel of engineering.
This is one of the oldest geological formations in northern Europe. Hardangervidda and its valleys were formed over thousands of years as glaciers carried ice debris toward the sea. What took glaciers and the relentless passage of time thousands of years to form, Norwegian railway and road builders completed in decades.
When the first survey of the Bergen line was conducted in 1872, Norway was a remote and poor part of a prosperous Europe. The discovery of oil, which would change the country, was still almost a century away. There was much debate about where the money would come from, and many wrong decisions were made. At that time, the export of sardines and herring fish sustained Norway’s national budget, leaving little for infrastructure projects.
Despite this, work on the line began in 1875 and was completed by 1909. Along the way, 39 stations (some for local trains only) were built. The route passes through some extremely challenging and winding terrain that you can only imagine.
Hardangervidda is notoriously inhospitable. The constantly changing weather was one of the main challenges faced by those building the line. In search of the most direct route, they constructed 180 tunnels, meaning there is one tunnel every 2.75 kilometers of track.
Norwegian transport historian Lisbeth Nilsen later told me in Bergen, “The Oslo-Bergen railway tells a very Norwegian story… When it comes to getting around in Norway, there’s always something in the way. If we let mountains or rocky ravines stop us, we’d never go anywhere. So, they built tunnels and roads and railway lines that seemed impossible to everyone else. This is part of what makes us Norwegian.”
When we reached the ski town of Geilo at half-distance and 794 meters above sea level, the world we had been traveling through until now had no resemblance left. Deep snow covered the landscape, and cross-country skiers left the train and headed out into the hills.
Above the Stauset (990 meters), with its cabins around a snowy lake, antlered reindeer stood as if they would pierce the blue sky. Norway has the largest population of wild reindeer, with 10,000 still roaming freely.
The highest station on this route is Finse Station, located 1,222 meters above sea level. Even in this winter season, a group of heavily laden hikers boarded the train, with snow still clinging to their beards and boots.
Johannesen said, “This is my favorite part of the journey. It’s all drama, and Hardangervidda is where trains always go silent.”
He was right. No one was speaking, and when the announcer broke the silence to announce our arrival at Myrdal, I wasn’t the only one startled by the sound of a human voice.
At Myrdal Station (867 meters), a train was waiting on another branch line. Myrdal has one of the steepest or most vertical railway lines in the world. From Myrdal to Flåm on the shore of Aurlandsfjord, where Sognefjord, an inner arm, winds and twists between 20 tunnels, the altitude drops by 866 meters in just 20 kilometers, meaning the train descends at a gradient of 1:18. At that moment, it seems like there’s nowhere in Norway that a train cannot reach.
While the ascent on Hardangervidda was slow and gradual, the descent toward the town of Voss happened much more rapidly. The snow began to thin, the land turned green again, and the rivers, lakes, and then the rocky valleys became clear and blue. Here was another Norway, where the track passed through one fjord after another. As we had departed Oslo many hours earlier, the railway line conquered difficult terrain and yet surrendered to it. There was no more pleasant time on the entire journey than the final curved loop along the edge of this last fjord.
And then Bergen arrived. The train passed through the seven fjords between the city’s seven hills and arrived at the station. Along the way, white-washed wooden buildings, hills above the city center, and autumn leaves painted the entire city in a golden hue, bringing us to the majestic train station. It was a fitting end to a grand journey, and in the excitement of reaching the destination, I felt as if I had just seen Norway for the first time.
