The Bergen Line
Northern Europe's highest railway crossing the plateau.
Smtunli, Svein-Magne Tunli - http://www.tunliweb.no/SM/English/sm_eng.htm — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jørgen Grundtvig-Olsen — Public domain · Jørgen Grundtvig-Olsen — Public domain · Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain
A railway between Bergen and Oslo of about 500 kilometres taking seven hours, consistently ranked among the finest train journeys in the world. It climbs from sea level at Bergen to 1,222 metres at Finse on the Hardangervidda — a view that shifts from fjords and waterfalls to a bare arctic plateau and then descends into the forests of eastern Norway. Worth it without hesitation, and since it is transport rather than an excursion, it costs an ordinary train fare if booked early.
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Hardangervidda is Norway's largest national park and the largest mountain plateau in Europe: some three thousand four hundred square kilometres of open treeless ground above a thousand metres, lying between Bergen and Oslo. The landscape is entirely unfamiliar: no sharp peaks and no narrow valleys but a wide horizontal expanse of bare rock, moss, lakes and bog, broken by cliffs at its edges. The climate is effectively arctic despite the latitude, which is why the plants and animals here belong more to the far north than to central Europe. The plateau holds the largest herd of wild reindeer in Europe — the last of their kind on the continent — and that is one reason for its protection. The famous Bergen Line crosses it, the highest railway in northern Europe, so the plateau can be seen from a train window without getting off. For walkers, a network of mountain huts run by the Norwegian trekking association links the routes.
Northern Europe's highest railway crossing the plateau.
A network linking routes for multi-day walkers.
Hardangervidda, southern Norway