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Exploring Norway: Tromsø and Lofoten

📅 2025-07-20

🏷 Life, Norway

I'm someone who appreciates true relaxation while on vacation: lingering in one place, letting one's mind go blank, enjoying the warm weather, maybe doing some swimming. A stereotypical afternoon on the beach sipping an icy beverage ranks pretty high up there. Unfortunately for me, none of that is really feasible due to having small kids. I'm constantly on duty/alert for cooking meals and snacks, potty time, miscellaneous sibling spats, and managing nap time. Also, my wife is more keen on exploring new places, seeing the world, and basically traveling around, so beach vacations are not in the cards that often. I don't think I've had a really relaxing vacation in something like seven years.

This summer was no exception as we decided to try a new sort of activity: renting a campervan and driving thousands of kilometers. A road trip to Norway is something that has been on the bucket list for a number of years — Norway has some amazing nature to explore: fjords, mountains, beaches, and idyllic coastal villages. We did get to see those things along the way, but mostly the trip felt like tens of hours of driving while stumbling on amazing views, with an inordinate amount of time spent dressing and undressing the kids when exiting and entering the van. As one might imagine, a campervan is not the most spacious of vehicles for a family of four, so these tasks were made all the more challenging by the cramped conditions. The outside temperature varied from 7°C (Kilpisjärvi in northern Finland) to 14°C in Norway while on the beach (not suitable for swimming!) and to 25°C when coming back south the Helsinki (as a heat wave was starting). Fortunately, we had packed clothing for all possible types of weather!

We were lucky to have mostly sunny weather, which allowed snapping some nice photos. I'm not a serious photographer in any way so we simply used our phones for this. Even so, the results were decent! At home in southern Finland, the landscapes are pretty flat, comprising mostly forests and lakes, so I was quite impressed with seeing the mountains and the Norwegian Sea in person.

I was the driver for the entire 3900 kilometers, piloting a Sunlight Cliff 600 RT campervan. That seems like a lot of distance to cover, but over two weeks it comes down to an average of 3–4 hours per day. After a day or two, I fell into some kind of a meditative state, content to watch the landscapes roll by. Once we left Finland, the views became more interesting and the roads more challenging, which staved off any boredom. Particularly in Norway, the roads are a near-constant rollercoaster of tight turns, steep slopes, and ups and downs. It was actually really fun. I found myself smiling as we navigated the corners, new mountain vistas revealing themselves behind the trees. It also led to the kids having a few instances of motion sickness, but thankfully, it could've been worse.

I was also impressed with the various bridges and tunnels we encountered. When arriving in the city of Tromsø, a tall bridge immediately catches the eye, connecting to the island of Tromsøya where the city center is located. Driving over it, you are about 40 meters above sealevel. We ended up driving back and forth over the bridge a few times as we decided to check out the city before settling in for the night in a cabin. On the way back from visiting Sommarøy, a small fishing village on the coast, we discovered there is also a tunnel that goes under the sea to a depth of about 100 meters! As the road descends steeply underground, you can feel the air pressure increase and temperature drop. We found a couple more of these undersea tunnels in Lofoten, which was always a thrilling surprise. All in all there were several tunnels in Lofoten, mostly passing through mountains; the longest we traversed was 6.4 km.

The campervan was the biggest vehicle I've driven. In the beginning, it felt like driving a damn bus but it became quite natural eventually. My own car felt like a toy afterwards, although it was great to feel actual acceleration again when pressing the gas pedal! I think this particular van is a nice compromise between the more sprawling motor homes and regular vans. Thanks to a pop-up tent that has space for two on the roof, the car is not much larger than a regular van. Several times I was surprised by how well it fit in parking spots and on the narrower roads. The interior was quite flexible, with the front seats turning around to face backwards, and an optional table one could place between them and the back seat that doubles as a little sofa. By the time the second week started, we had gotten used to quickly setting things up for an overnight stay, with child seats stowed in the front, the table swiftly extracted from the trunk, and the gas stove turned on for cooking.

We drove all the way to the end of the E10 road, to Å, close to the western tip of the Lofoten archipelago. On the way, the town of Reine provided a nice lunch stop and a bowl of delicious fish soup. I expected the road to get narrower and more rural at the end, but turns out the road to Sommarøya was more difficult in this regard. The Lofoten E10 was generally an easy drive. All in all, it was quite a whirlwind tour of the islands, as we made shorter trips around with Skagsanden beach as our base. Camping near the beach would've been great if the weather wasn't so cold and windy; having our swimming gear and beach toys at the ready was for naught. The beach was a beautiful expanse of pale sand, long and shallow. A few intrepid swimmers were sprinting back and forth between a small sauna and the waves. I know from past experience that you tend to get awfully cold running any distance from a sauna to the water, so I did not envy these brave souls who dove under the surf of the cool Norwegian Sea.

Lofoten is a popular tourist destination, particularly for caravaners. I braced myself for congested roads and packed camping sites, but at least in early July it wasn't too bad. Thus, it also didn't feel very bad contributing to the tourist onslaught. The region seems full of museums, cafes, and restaurants so at least the locals expect plenty of people to come visit. Only in Tromsø was the camping site full, which was partially why we opted to stay in a cabin for the night. (The other reason was getting a break from sleeping on the thin van mattresses. We could've likely found a caravan spot not far away at another camping site, but it had been a long day already.) Visiting Nusfjord on one afternoon — another picturesque museum village also serving as an arctic resort — there were zero parking spots to be found, so we had to come back in the morning the next day. Luckily, the small road leading into Nusfjord provided interesting views of sailboats in the fjord, with a backdrop of harsh cliffs.

While most of the trip had a hectic routine of driving, taking photos, walking around towns and beaches, settling in and cooking dinner, getting the kids ready for bed, and gearing up in the morning for another day of the same, I did manage to catch my breath and lean back with my iPad a couple of times. On one occasion, early in the morning, I decided to update the Code of Conduct on bbs.geminispace.org, which requires reloading the configuration files. Logged in via a terminal on the iPad, I chose to restart the server and was surprised to see a dynamic linker error about a missing dependency. Apparently, some recent software upgrade on the server had removed OpenSSL 1.1.1 from system libraries entirely, which broke one of the Python packages needed by GmCapsule. The fix was fortunately as easy as manually compiling OpenSSL. All this was happening in the van while everyone still slept. I typed away at the terminal, slightly nervous about the kids waking up, as their subsequent loud demands for breakfast would've interrupted the operation. I shall henceforth resist temptation to fiddle with the server while on a trip.

The whole two weeks were certainly an EXPERIENCE. I've been taking this week easy to unwind, to get some proper sleep and relax. While it wasn't my ideal kind of a vacation trip, it certainly was something new and I will always appreciate seeing beautiful landscapes. I was left with a desire to visit Norway again when the kids are a bit older, and proceed at a more leisurely pace.

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