We both agreed it would be the journey of a lifetime. I had boarded a Bergen-bound train from Oslo at the same time as Jürgen, a keen photographer from Austria, and we’d fallen into conversation as the train idled in the station. Stashed in his bags were cameras, lenses and memory cards soon to fill up with jpegs of the Norwegian landscape. The moving train would, he hoped, provide an ever-changing canvas of glassy fjords and snowy mountains, all snapped from the warmth of his window seat.
Only during a lull in conversation did his eyes wander to the station platform where he recognised a duty-free carrier bag left on a bench. His eyes widened. He sprinted. The doors locked. My abiding memory of the Bergensbanen — the Bergen line — will be Jürgen’s face stranded on that platform, sad and envious as the train gathered momentum, his camera gear, toiletries, indeed his underpants, setting out on their own journey unchaperoned through the fells and fjords. Though perhaps it was a lesson, a reminder of how blessed passengers should consider themselves to be riding these hallowed rails.
The Bergensbanen is one of Norway’s main rail arteries, connecting the country’s two biggest cities, Oslo and Bergen. Like the mainline railway from London to Birmingham, it carries a steady stream of commercial freight as well as stressed business folk waving season tickets. When their gaze wanders from Zoom calls, they can briefly remember theirs is a commute of wild and exquisite beauty.
The railway covers a cross-section of Norwegian geography, from the lakeland landscapes of the east to salty fjords in the west, and between them a snowbound wilderness mostly silent but for the thud of reindeer hoofs and the screech of wheels on iron.
Norway is an expensive country in which to travel. It smashes away at your bank balance like Thor’s hammer. But a ticket to Bergen offers unimaginable value: six and a half hours of landscapes unfurl outside the window, paced like a cinematic epic that’s scored by the clank of rails. Two lively cities serve as the opening and closing credits. On YouTube a video showing a cab’s view of the line in real time has gathered a million views. “Very soothing . . .” wrote one user. “It eases the anxiety a bit.”
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The journey west begins serenely enough, the train skirting still lakes in the hinterland of Oslo, red cabins dotting the boreal forests. Then the line doglegs northwards into increasingly barren hills and towns with increasingly monosyllabic names: Fla, Gol and Al. Mustard-yellow stations wait patiently by the lineside. At Gol I had an open sandwich for lunch. In the outdoor activity capital of Geilo I disembarked to go cycling. But my attention inevitably returned to the trains, which purr through the landscape eight times a day and help to sustain the archipelago of settlements strung through these hills.
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The Bergensbanen has its genesis in the late 19th century, a time when travelling from Oslo to Bergen entailed a five-day steamboat journey on a much longer route all the way around the coast. The Norwegian interior presented no easy options for railway builders but after heated debate in parliament, it was decided the line would take a direct, daring route across the Hardangervidda, a primeval mountain plateau (forbidding enough to contain the words “hard” and “danger”). Only in 1884 did the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen make the first ski crossing of this wilderness. Barely a decade later, it was resolved that iron rails would follow his pioneering path.
Beyond Geilo the gradients steepened and my ears popped. Soon we were rolling through a treeless tundra pockmarked by lakes and punctuated by lichen-garlanded rocks. The line is single track. In certain spots you can look from both sides and discern no trace of human existence — only a mountain plateau, steamrollered flat by glaciers aeons ago. In sections where snowdrifts pile up by the line, you could imagine yourself on a train ride through the Ice Age, the toot of the train being the trumpeting of a mammoth. Other European trains venture into high mountains — the little red trains of Switzerland hurdle and hurry over Alpine passes — but the Bergensbanen feels less like a scenic jaunt, more like a serious expedition: slogging through terra incognita with the persistence of Nansen.
Our train reached the highest point of the Norwegian network at Finse station. Perched at 1,222m, it is almost as lofty as Ben Nevis. It was here that, 44 years ago, one of the most fearsome storms in memory raged. Winds of 40mph whipped across Hardangervidda. The temperature grazed minus 40C. Avalanches blocked the Bergensbanen, cutting Finse off from the rest of the world. The weather happened to coincide with the filming of The Empire Strikes Back. Its producers had (against the polite advice of the Norwegian tourist board) decided to film scenes of the ice planet Hoth in Finse. Camera lenses froze over. Someone got frostbite. Harrison Ford had to disembark his Bergensbanen service at Geilo where the railway became impassable and arrive in Finse on a special snowplough engine (its driver having been bribed with vodka). He allegedly arrived drunk at midnight. “I never realised that amount of snow existed!” the art director Alan Tomkins told Jonathan Rinzler for his book on making of the film.
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The storm was so bad that plans for some locations were abandoned and scenes of The Empire Strikes Back were shot outside the front door of Hotel Finse 1222, a mountain lodge that has existed since 1906 — and the place where I enjoyed an overnight stop midway through my Bergensbanen odyssey. Tall windows afforded views of Hardangerjokulen glacier, which crowns the southern horizon. At night a sweep of stars glinted icily above. Guests can indeed consider themselves transported to a place far, far away.
The next morning, I boarded an onward train on its Valkyrie-like ride through the tundra. At Myrdal station, a small exodus of passengers disembarked for a detour on the Flam Railway, the sole surviving branch line on the Bergensbanen, descending some 900m to the mouth of one of Norway’s most sublime fjords. It’s a tourist-orientated operation, often marketed as part of a Norway in a Nutshell package tour. But as a whole-nut rail fan I stayed on the Bergensbanen, rapt by its soundtrack: the clatter crossing an iron bridge, the sudden thunder of a tunnel, the chatter of a new station and the silence of Hallingskeid. Served by no roads, manned by no staff and serving no settlement, this outpost exists solely for hikers, who set off into the realm of the reindeer herds and the Arctic fox.
Slowly but surely the Bergensbanen is rehabilitated into green lowland landscapes, joining rushing streams and Alpine rivers as they muster strength and march west to the Atlantic fjords. The line terminates in a sombre grey station in Bergen, a few blocks from quayside warehouses where Hanseatic merchants once unloaded their cargo and 19th-century passengers embarked for the five-day steamer to Oslo. Our train idled on the platform before making the return trip to the capital. I watched it depart, sad and envious. Though my luggage was unloaded, my mind was still on board, dreaming about days riding through the mountains.
Oliver Smith travelled independently. One-way Oslo-Bergen tickets from £25pp (vy.no). Six nights’ B&B from £1,399pp, including flights, travel on the Bergensbanen and Flam railways, excursions and some extra meals (greatrail.com). For places to stay in Oslo and Bergen, see thetimes.co.uk/travel
