Trip Report - 2 months in the Nordic countries

Norway:

• I flew to Oslo. My arrival in Oslo was a minor disaster - I tried to take the regular train from the airport into the city but got on the wrong train. Once I got into Oslo I had difficulty with figuring out the transit and decided to take a taxi but got ripped off by the taxi driver.

• I hadn’t made any bookings for Norway (other than my arrival in Oslo) because I wanted to wait to see what the weather would be like. The weather looked nice for the fjords so I decided to head out there. Unfortunately, I had a terrible time trying to get accommodations booked and train reservations made and it took two very frustrating days to get things figured out. It all worked out okay in the end though. I had nice weather for the fjords and Bergen. In fact the 2½ weeks I was in Norway it didn’t rain at all which was really surprising.

• Train from Oslo to Flam via Myrdal (scenic!).

• Flam: Beautiful! I did the bus trip to Stegastein viewpoint, ferry to Gudvangen and back (and Viking Village in Gudvangen), and walking in the Flam Valley.

• Ferry to Balestrand (scenic!).

• Balestrand: Beautiful! Half day trip to Vik to see Hopperstad Stave Church (wow!) and hiking around Balestrand.

• Ferry to Bergen (scenic!).

• Bergen:

-- This is where I had a lot of difficulty getting accommodation. I had two nights at one hostel and one night at another hostel. Then I had one night where I couldn’t find any accommodation in Bergen, not even a budget hotel. I ended up spending the night at the hostel in Voss (so I had to take a train there and then back to Bergen the next day). Then it was back to Bergen for two nights at the first hostel and another night at the second hostel.

-- I spent two days sightseeing in Bergen.

-- I spent two days hiking around Bergen, one day at Mt. Ulriken and one day at Mt. Floyen.

-- I did two day trips to the fjords from Bergen. One day I went to Rosendal on the Hardangerfjord and visited the Rosendal Barony which is very nice (this tour: https://rodne.no/en/fjordcruise/fjord-cruise-to-hardanger/). The other day I went to the Osterfjord and did the hike to “The Castle” and it was amazing (this tour: https://rodne.no/en/fjordcruise/fjordcruise-guided-mountain-hike-to-slottet/).

-- For Voss, I was planning on taking the gondola up into the mountains and going hiking but it was unexpectedly closed so I just did some walking along the lakeshore which was nice.

• Train to Oslo (scenic!). I had difficulty getting a train reservation and the only train available departed mid-afternoon and arrived in Oslo at 10:30 pm.

• Oslo: I spent a couple days in Oslo sightseeing. The 2 things I wanted to see in Oslo were the Viking Ship Museum and Ski Museum but both are closed for renos so that was disappointing (I knew about this ahead of time from my pre-trip research).

After Norway my plan was:

• Train to Gothenburg and spend a few days there

• Ferry to Denmark and train to Aarhus

• Visit Aarhus, Odense, and Copenhagen

• Train to Stockholm

However, all the hostels in Gothenburg were booked full, even though I tried making the booking part way through my time in Norway. So then I flipped things around and came up with a new plan:

• Train to Copenhagen

• Visit Copenhagen, Odense, and Aarhus

• Train and ferry over to Gothenburg and then on to Stockholm.

I still couldn’t get a hostel in Gothenburg. I also found that the hostel in Odense didn’t seem to have any dorm rooms. So what I ended up doing was:

• Travel to Copenhagen and visit the city

• Travel to Aarhus with a stopover in Odense for sightseeing

• Aarhus

• Travel to Copenhagen with a stopover in Odense for the sightseeing

• Travel to Stockholm and spend a couple days there

• Travel to Gothenburg and spend a few days there

• Travel back to Stockholm and spend some more time there.

I spent way too many hours on my tablet trying to get this figured out. At least it all worked okay and I was able to do everything I wanted to, although the extra back and forth was annoying.

So anyways from Oslo it was off to Copenhagen and my plan was to take the train but it was a major disaster and I ended up having to fly. For details see https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/oslo-arrival-and-departure-disasters

Denmark:

• Copenhagen: Nice city with lots to see and do. I did a day trip to Roskilde to visit the Viking Ship Museum and it was fascinating. The Viking Ship Musuem was one of the highlights of my trip.

• Odense: For the first day I was there I visited sites related to Hans Christian Andersen. For the second day I was there I visited the Danish Railway Museum.

• Aarhus: Lovely city with lots to see and do.

Sweden:

• Stockholm: Magnificent city! I really enjoyed it and there’s so much to see and do. One of the days I did a trip to the archipelago and I did a full day tour with Stromma (this tour: https://www.stromma.com/en-se/stockholm/excursions/day-trips/canal-tour-to-sandhamn/). Other highlights included Gamla Stan, the Vasa Museum, and Skansen.

• When I travelled to Gothenburg I wasn’t able to get a reservation for a direct train even though I was booking a few days in advance (I couldn’t believe that every train was booked full). Fortunately the staff at the train station were able to find an alternate way to get to Gothenburg that took 2 trains and a couple more hours.

• Gothenburg: Lovely city with lots of see and do.

-- I went on a canal boat tour and it was hilarious. it was rainy and windy so at the start the captain informed us that with regards to the weather we were getting a real Gothenburg experience! There are many bridges across the canals and some are low plus the water levels were high because of the rain so sometimes we had to duck when going underneath a bridge. However, there were a few bridges where ducking wasn’t sufficient so before going under the bridge everyone had to get down on the deck!

-- I did a day trip to the Gothenburg Archipelago and used the ferry to visit two different islands in the southern part of the archipelago.

• Early train to Stockholm, chucked stuff in a luggage locker, and headed off to Uppsala to spend the afternoon at Gamla Uppsala before heading back to Stockholm.

• A few more days in Stockholm.

Finland

• I took the ferry from Stockholm to Turku and I went on the daytime ferry. It’s an 11 hour trip. The ferry route goes through three groups of islands - the Stockholm Archipelago, the Aland Islands, and the Turku Archipelago - so it’s a scenic voyage. It was a beautiful summer day and I spent much of trip out on deck enjoying the sunshine and scenery.

• Turku: Nice little city

• Train to Helsinki

• Helsinki: It’s a lovely city with lots to see and do. Highlights included the various churches, Suomenlinna, and Seurasaari.

Iceland

• I flew from Helsinki to Reykjavik and had a 4 night stopover.

• Reykjavik: It’s a fun little city. Besides visiting the city I did the following activities:

-- I went on a puffin tour. They’re so cute!

-- I did a half day tour to the Lava Tunnel (Raufarholshellir Lava Tube) and it was neat to see (this tour: https://thelavatunnel.is/)

-- Videy Island

Then my trip was over :( and it was time to fly home.

Some other details about the trip…

Flights: As mentioned, I booked my flights with Icelandair so I could take advantage of their stopover. I booked an open jaw ticket from Vancouver to Oslo with a 7 night stopover in Reykjavik and return from Helsinki with a 4 night stopover in Reykjavik. The legroom on Icelandair is uncomfortable due to the way the seats are arranged and there’s no free food provided. Also, the Keflavik airport in Reykjavik is horrible and it’s the worst airport I’ve ever been in. It is way over capacity with not enough room, most flights use shuttle buses and stairs for boarding, and there is a general disorganization about the place. The end result is extreme overcrowding and chaos.

Accommodations: I stayed in hostels as much as possible because it’s cheaper than staying in a hotel and also hostels have kitchens so I could make my own meals which is cheaper than eating out. The hostel in Balestrand wasn’t open yet for the season so I had to stay in a hotel (I knew about this ahead of time from my pre-trip research). The Iceland tour included hotels as part of the tour. As mentioned earlier, I had a lot of difficulty finding a hostel to stay at in some places, particularly Norway and Gothenburg. There seems to be a severe shortage of hostel beds in some cities, which is rather surprising (given how expensive things are I thought there would be a lot more hostels than there are). I had difficulty getting dorm rooms in some of the hostels and had to book private rooms a few times (more expensive than a dorm room but not as expensive as a hotel room). Some of the hostels charge a lot more on weekends than on weekdays, which I wasn’t expecting. Overall, the hostels were okay and most I would rate about a 6 or 7 out of 10. The hostels I stayed at in Finland had a sauna and it was free to use so that was nice. A lot of hostels had breakfast but most charged a fee for it and it was really expensive so I passed on it and just did my own breakfast because it was cheaper to buy food from the grocery store.

Trains: I bought a Eurail Global Pass with 10 days in 2 months. I used 9 of the days, although one was wasted with the Oslo to Copenhagen disaster. I had difficulty getting train reservations for Norway and Sweden and I had to pay a small fee for the reservation. I forgot to use the discount for the ferry to Finland (I suddenly remembered as I was sitting in the waiting room prior to boarding). I bought the pass on sale in March and I think I got reasonably good value for it. Other than getting on the wrong train at the Oslo airport (I still have no idea how that happened) everything went okay with taking the trains in Europe.

Public Transit: Overall, things went fairly well with using public transit. I had some difficulties with figuring out the tram systems in Oslo, Gothenburg, and Helsinki. Sometimes it was hard to find where to get the tram and there were a few times I got on the wrong tram. Most transit system have an app. I couldn’t use the transit app in Stockholm because it wouldn’t accept my credit card (there was a note on the payment screen about the app using a Swedish banking authentication method which is probably why) so I had to get a transit card and use that.

Technology: I took my cell phone with me. I used data only eSims from Airalo. I bought a 7 day Iceland eSim and then two 30 day Europe eSims. I got the eSim with the least amount of data and used Wi-Fi as much as possible and I didn’t have any issues with running out of data on the eSim. The eSim worked well and I had good connectivity and speed almost everywhere I went. For phone calls and texts I used my regular SIM and phone plan. Roaming charges are really expensive so I avoided phone calls as much as possible (there were a couple times when it was unavoidable). I don’t think I sent any texts.
Google Maps was really helpful. I had some issues using it with transit though. The first issue is that in some cities it wasn’t very good at figuring out routes (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Helsinki) and I had to figure out things myself a lot. For example, one day in Stockholm I was at City Hall and wanted to go to the Royal Palace. Google Maps couldn’t provide transit directions and only had walking directions. However, there’s a bus stop out in front of city hall with a bus that goes to Gamla Stan and stops a couple blocks away from the Royal Palace. The other issue is that when there are walking directions combined with transit, for the walking portion Google Maps doesn’t provide a directional arrow like it does for walking directions only, which made it difficult to use. So if I had to walk from A to B, take transit from B to C, and walk from C to D. when walking the map doesn’t show the directional arrow so it was hard to know if I was walking in the right direction. I found that what I had to do was lookup the route on Google Maps, get out my pen and notepad that I always carry when travelling, write down the route on paper (which seems kind of silly), and then do each segment on its own. This way when walking I could get the directional arrow. The other advantage to this is that sometimes Google Maps provides unrealistic times, e.g. it might give you 1 minute from when you arrive at the entrance to a metro station to get to the platform but it might take 3-4 minutes to get to the platform, so by doing each segment on its own I had the most up to date info.
Other apps I used a lot were Google Translate and a currency converter app I downloaded.
I also took a tablet with me and it was really helpful for making reservations, surfing the Internet, checking email, making reservations, looking at my photos, etc. (the larger screen size makes it easier to use than the phone).

Guidebooks: Unfortunately, there isn’t one single guidebook that’s a good comprehensive guidebook with all the info I needed so I had to take four guidebooks with me (ugh) and I used the following guidebooks on my trip:

• Lonely Planet Scandinavia (13th edition, published 2018): It covers all five countries. I purchased it at the beginning of 2020 and used it for initial research.

• Rough Guides Iceland (8th edition, published 2022)

• Rough Guides Norway (8th edition, published 2022)

• Rick Steves Scandinavia (16th edition, published 2021): It covers Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland (although selected areas only). There’s a separate Rick Steves guidebook for Iceland but I decided to purchase Rough Guides Iceland instead because it’s more recent.

I used different guidebooks in different places.

• Iceland: Rough Guides Iceland

• Norway: Rough Guides Norway and Rick Steves Scandinavia

• Denmark: Rick Steves Scandinavia

• Sweden

-- Gothenburg: Lonely Planet Scandinavia

-- Stockholm: Rick Steves Scandinavia

• Finland

-- Turku: Lonely Planet Scandinavia

-- Helsinki: Rick Steves Scandinavia

Pre-Trip Reading List: See https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/books-movies/nordic-countries-reading-list

Language: Overall, the language barrier was fairly low. Most people I encountered could speak at least a little English and a lot of people spoke it well.

Money: Before leaving home I went to my bank and got a small amount of cash for each country (they all have their own currencies, except for Finland which is on the Euro). I didn’t need it at all and I was able to use my credit card everywhere just like at home.

Budget (all amounts in Canadian dollars): It was expen$$$ive. I budgeted between $17,000 and $20,000 and it ended up being about $17,300 so I was on budget (by comparison my 4 month Australia / New Zealand trip was about $15,000).

• Flights: I budgeted $2500 but I paid about $3500. I could not believe how expensive the flights were. I looked at other options for flying but they weren’t any cheaper and most were more expensive. By comparison, for my Australia / New Zealand trip I paid about $1500 for an open jaw ticket with a flight to Brisbane and a return flight from Auckland with Air Canada (both nonstop).

• Sightseeing: I budgeted $30 per day but things were more expensive than expected and I spent $38 per day.

• Hostels: I budgeted $50 per night but it came in at $68 per night due to a variety of factors: hostels were more expensive that I thought, some hostels charged significantly higher prices on weekends, and I had to book private rooms at some hostels because that’s all that was available.

• Food: I budgeted $30 per day. I realized early on in the trip that the hostels and sightseeing were going to be more expensive than I thought so I cut back on eating out and I managed to subsist on $23 per day.

• Transportation: This included trains, ferries, public transit, etc. I budgeted $2200 and I was a little over budget. Getting the rail pass on sale really helped and it offset the unexpected costs of flying from Oslo to Copenhagen and getting ripped by the taxi driver in Oslo.

• Iceland Tour: I budgeted $4000. The tour was about $2500 but by the time I added in items that weren’t included in the tour it was about $2900.

• I had some other categories in my budget like travel insurance, supplies, misc. expenses, etc. They all came in under budget so that helped.

Final thoughts: In spite of it being really expensive and all the difficulties with booking hostels and trains and the Oslo arrival/departure disasters, I enjoyed the trip and I’m glad I did it. However, I don’t think I would go back again because it’s so expensive. In fact, although I enjoyed both of my trips to Europe, I don’t think I would visit Europe again, partly because it’s expensive and partly because there really aren’t any other areas of Europe that I want to visit.

Hopefully this information will be helpful to those who are planning a trip to the Nordic countries. Please let me know if there’s anything you would like to know that I haven’t covered.

Thank you for such a detailed, candid and thorough report. The last time I stayed in a Scandinavian youth hostel was in 1978, long before apps or touch-pay, but it is very interesting to see how that kind of trip will go today, and I'm sure your report will be very valuable to those traveling that way now.

Congratulations on such a comprehensive tour of these countries! You covered a lot.

The expensive part is a tough one and you did well finding some cost saving strategies. With extended family there, I have been travelling to Norway for 55 years and it has always been expensive:) My dad grew up at the end of the Hardangerfjord in Odda but it isn’t that touristy; most people do what you did going to Rosendal. It is all quite beautiful.

55 years ago, my first trip there included a fuel stop in Reykjavik going and one in Greenland coming back. Air travel has changed but the cost has definitely crept up again in the past year.

Thank you for this amazing trip report. I really enjoyed reading it. I hope I'll get to visit the nordic countries too. Iceland has been on my bucket list for a really long time now. I just need to save up enough money and then I'll definitely visit it. I have heard it's really beautiful and I would love to get to see it myself. Thank you again for taking your time to write this report.

When I travelled to Gothenburg I wasn’t able to get a reservation for
a direct train even though I was booking a few days in advance (I
couldn’t believe that every train was booked full).

Not at all surprising. The trains are popular in the summer and often sell out.

(there was a note on the payment screen about the app using a Swedish
banking authentication method which is probably why)

Sounds like 3-D secure, a technology used for safe online purchases. And has been used for many years. But somehow North american banks have been reluctant to implement it.

In general, booking things in advance is a good idea. There has been an increase in travel after the pandemic.

You gave us a great trip report; very thorough! I find the Google map part helpful and we have experienced that as well on other trips to Europe. Figuring out the transportation of each city has been a little tricky at times, but we eventually always manage to do it! My husband is taking his iPad for exactly what you stated when we leave for those countries on August 16th. He has been checking transit routed on Google Maps for all the places we want to go and he is making notes in a little notebook, so thank you for sharing that you did the same. I have got my credit card info in the SL app for Stockholm so we will see if that works for us; we will probably try to go to one of the Pressbyran stores initially and see if we can get the pass on our app while in the store and if not, purchase a card. Thanks for all the great tips and sharing.

Evan, thank you for a very thorough, comprehensive trip report. Loved hearing about your adventure and your ability to cope when things didn’t go as planned. Sounds like a wonderful trip. So much has changed since I visited Scandinavia on a tour in 1969.

Very impressive Nordic adventure and really impressed with how you manage all the logistics and pivot your locations, accommodations, and transport so smoothly--or at least it seems that way. I would be supremely stressed out under similar circumstances. Also awesome that you have so much time available to get away from the US and do these multi country expeditions.