The Akerselva walk
A continuous route from Lake Maridalen to the fjord.
Leonhard Lenz — CC0 · Tore Sætre — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0
Yes, and it is among the best free things to do in Oslo. The route runs continuously about eight kilometres from Lake Maridalen in the north to the fjord at the opera house, and takes two to three hours at an easy pace. The practical way is to take a bus to the northern end and walk down with the current, so the whole walk is downhill. It passes waterfalls and old industrial buildings turned into art schools and cafés, and districts that change completely every kilometre. You can break off at any point and take a tram back.
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Nedre Foss is the lowest and largest of the Akerselva's waterfalls inside the city, with a public park around it in the Grünerløkka district — and it is where you understand why Oslo's industry grew where it did. The Akerselva drops two hundred metres in eight kilometres from Lake Maridalen to the fjord, and that gradient is what drove the mills and then the factories along its banks through the nineteenth century. A mill stood at this particular fall from the Middle Ages, and the old farmhouse, Nedre Foss gård, still stands above it. Today the whole river is a continuous walking route from lake to sea, and the park here is among its most used stretches: grass, a waterfall, benches and children. Grünerløkka around it is Oslo's liveliest district — cafés, second-hand clothes shops and weekend markets. Free and always open.
A continuous route from Lake Maridalen to the fjord.
Oslo's liveliest district, around the park.
Nedre Foss park, Grünerløkka, 0555 Oslo