Olden, Norway

 August 1, 2023

This ended up being my favourite port of the whole cruise!

Olden is situated at the end of the 106 km long Nordfjord. This means you get to sail in the beautiful fjord for a long time when coming in and going out to the port of Olden.

Olden is just a small village with a population just under 500 people.

Here are a few photos of the sail in to Olden:

And this is what it looks like when you finally dock in Olden:

There are two main attractions you can see from this port - the Briksdal Glacier and the Loen Skylift. We opted for the skylift simply for the amazing views. We bought our ticket ahead of time from Olden Adventure Tours so when we got off the ship we just checked in at a table at the port and went to get on the bus. It was a short bus ride (about 10 minutes) to the skylift and then we were able to get right on the skylift.

The Loen skylift is the steepest cable car in the whole entire world. It was difficult to capture in pictures but at some points it looked like it was almost vertical! We had trouble getting a picture that captured the steepness of the cable car. This was the best attempt. You can just see the top of it.

Here is a video that tries to show the steepness!

The views from the top were simply fantastic!

Once at the top you can also take a series of different hiking paths to get different views (and some exercise I guess!). The trails had cairns as markers, and there was a sign that said DO NOT make more we don't want hikers getting lost!

Here is Steve on one of the hiking trail viewpoints!

If you are so inclined (which I am definitely not!) you could also go paragliding off this mountain. Here's a video Steve caught of one of the many people we saw jumping off the mountain!

As our time progressed up there it would go from completely sunny, to having cloud cover! It was pretty cool to see. I also kept hearing these bells ringing and finally determined  a few of the mountain goats had bells on and I could hear them as they were eating grass!

After heading back down we did a little walk through the town. As you can imagine it didn't take long in a town of under 500 people. Most of the businesses we saw were tourist shops. This is what houses look like in Olden, Norway:

Also we found more trolls!

We found a church with a cemetery (also no relatives here!).

This is the old church in Olden and is called a "Stave Church". It looked like each family would have their own pew with a door.

Steve and I were both fascinated with the next picture. Steve has ancestors from Norway and we both thought a couple of the men in these photos could have been somehow related to him because they looked a lot like his Grandpa Hogg!

As we continued our walk back to the ship, of course we made a pit stop at the local bakery!

As our ship sailed away from Olden, the locals did this very sweet thing. They were waving their Norwegian flag and blaring the song "Time to say Good-bye". Either they were thanking us for coming... or telling us it was time to get out... I like to think it was a thank you 😀

* Cancel that... youtube won't let me use it because of the song copyright. Just know it was very cool!

And one final picture as we sail away. Look a rainbow!