Norway – Waiting a Lifetime for Svalbard

This one wasn't a Box Trip. Right after my mom died, my brother and I asked my dad which place she'd loved most, half-thinking about spreading some of her ashes there. He started with South Georgia Island, where he and my mom had gone together in the late 2010s. One of their favorite photos is the two of them next to Shackleton's grave. My brother and I just looked at each other. It's not an easy trip to make. But he also mentioned Bergen, Norway, and that one we could work with. A few days later we asked him, separately, where he'd want to go in his lifetime. He said Svalbard. When we found a Viking Ocean Cruises itinerary that hit both Bergen and Svalbard, that was that. We booked two weeks for June 2026: my dad and his friend, my brother and his wife, and me and Seth, all flying in from different directions to meet up in Norway.

We flew out overnight from Seattle to Reykjavik, and it never actually got dark the whole flight, just dimmer. That was our first real hint of what midnight sun was going to mean for the next few weeks. After a short stop in Iceland, we flew on to Bergen a day ahead of the ship. We ran into my dad and his friend coming off the elevator at the hotel. They'd just arrived too and were out trying to stay awake. The next morning we met up with my brother and his wife for a fjord cruise.

We got there early enough to grab seats upstairs, outside, for the views. Good thing, because the line filled in fast behind us. As we left Bergen it started raining, then raining harder, until it was a full downpour and only five or six of us were still standing outside. We ducked inside and stood around waiting for it to clear up, then went back out once it did. Deep in the fjord we passed Mo, a tiny town right at the very end, and near it a narrow channel that had been cut off from the sea for years. Over time the water broke through anyway and reconnected it. We dried off back at the hotel that evening.

The next morning we walked to the ship instead of taking the five-minute shuttle, mostly so Seth could hunt down a pair of binoculars. He came away with a monocular he still loves. We checked in and got settled. Our Bergen city tour the next day started at the Fløyen funicular, up to the top of the hill in surprisingly good weather. There were, randomly, goats up there. We took photos with a troll statue, the first of many trolls we'd pose with over the next few weeks. The stave church was a bit of a letdown once I realized it had been built in the early 2000s rather than being one of the truly old ones, though it was done in the right style. We skipped the rest of the walking tour for the Troll Museum instead, which was fun but not fifty dollars fun. Then we were back on the ship.

I didn't sleep at all the night before Eidsdal. My watch gave me a sleep score of 51, which felt about right. But sailing up the fjord that morning, cliffs on both sides and the water dead calm, was something else entirely. I've seen fjords in Chile and New Zealand, and this one still stood out against both. Our planned excursion had been cancelled the day before, so we took the included one instead. I almost skipped it given how tired I was. Glad I didn't. Eagle's Bend, overlooking Geirangerfjord, is the actual inspiration for Frozen, and it earns it. The drive there alone gave me some of my favorite photos of the trip, several taken through a moving bus window. From there we drove through the town of Geiranger to the Flydal overlook for a different angle on the same fjord, then up to Djupvatnet, a lake at the top of the pass that was still half frozen. It was brutally cold up there, windy too, standing next to a frozen lake at that altitude in early June. It was amazing, and I was glad when it was time to get back on the bus. I napped hard that afternoon, then walked the top deck while the ship sat docked, which somehow made for one of the best afternoons of the whole trip.

Somewhere around June 9, on a sea day between Eidsdal and Narvik, the sun rose and then just didn't set again. Not really. It dipped and dimmed some nights, but full dark didn't come back until we were in Iceland again, more than a week later. I'd read about the midnight sun before this trip, but living inside it for eleven straight days is a different thing entirely. The photo below is from 1am one night.

Narvik came with a bit of WWII history. It was an ice-free port during the war and still ships Sweden's iron ore out today, which is the whole reason the town exists. We drove down Skjomenfjord, frustrating at first because we were seated on the wrong side of the bus to see anything, then genuinely stunning once we turned around and started heading back. We stopped at the far end of the fjord, where the water was completely still and the mountains reflected off of it almost perfectly. A few waterfalls were the only sound. A family was camping in a van right there, and I understood immediately why they'd chosen that spot. Norway lets people camp basically anywhere that isn't private land, and we saw tents and campers everywhere the rest of the trip. Back on board, I spent the evening up on deck eight, sun still out, feeling pretty content with life.

I'd been looking forward to Lofoten more than almost anywhere else on this trip. I'd seen so many pictures of it over the years, all either perfectly clear and sunny or blanketed in winter snow, and I wanted my own version of those photos. I booked a private guide instead of a group tour because I wanted time where we actually felt like stopping, not a schedule built around herding a busload of people on and off. Instead, the day was rainy and cloudy the whole time, and we couldn't even dock, so we had to tender in. Our guide met us fine. We stopped at a white sand beach I did not expect to find in Norway, then queued for a one-way tunnel under construction that only opened in each direction once an hour. We hit a handful of photo stops I recognized from other people's pictures, worked down to the end-of-the-road town of Å, pronounced like "oh," which was cute but thoroughly touristy, then doubled back north for what was supposed to be lunch and turned into twenty rushed minutes at a slow, confusing restaurant so we could make the tunnel window again. It ended up being a disappointing day, and I'm still not entirely sure why. The weather didn't help. Our guide was fine, not great and not bad, just fine. I think some of it was that my expectations were too high, and I hadn't understood how much of the day would be driving. Lofoten itself is genuinely dramatic looking, even through the clouds. I just don't think I got the day I'd pictured.

Tromsø, on the other hand, delivered completely. We took the tram up to a lookout surrounded by snow-covered mountains, and no photo I took really captures it. From there we crossed town to the Arctic Museum, which had small but interesting sections on the northern lights, local wildlife, and the Sami people. Then the Polar Museum, which was so crowded and warm that we gave up and walked back to the ship instead, skipping a second Troll Museum that looked identical to Bergen's.

Honningsvåg was rainy, and we were both fighting colds by then. Seth stayed on the ship. I almost did too, but this felt like a once-in-a-lifetime stop, so I went. It's a tiny town, maybe 3,000 people, connected to the mainland by tunnel. The drive up to North Cape took about 45 minutes each way, and the viewpoint itself was completely socked in with clouds, which somehow made for more interesting photos than clear skies would have. The building at the top goes four stories underground and includes a cinema playing an overproduced video with no narration, a chapel, and, oddly, a monument to a 19th century Thai king that I still don't fully understand the story behind. Outside, there was the Monument to the Children of the World that was haunting in the clouds.

Svalbard is where the whole trip really landed for me. We'd seen it on the horizon the night before but didn't actually dock until morning, and it was bigger than I expected. Because Svalbard felt like such a genuine once-in-a-lifetime stop, I booked a private tour again for our first day there. I didn't want to be herded around a place like this; I wanted to actually take it in. Our guide, Lorenzo, got us fitted with rubber boots. Our captain, Eric, wore sandals right up until he started driving the boat, then just piloted us in his socks for the rest of the day. From there we headed out across Isfjorden and into Billefjorden toward Nordenskiöldbreen, a massive glacier at the far end of the fjord. On the way, we passed Pyramiden, an old settlement Sweden founded in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927 for coal mining. It closed down decades ago, and today only about six people live there through the summer, running the hotel and leading tours for visitors like us.

We tendered in near the glacier and scrambled over rocks to reach it. Then we strapped crampons onto our rubber boots, since walking on a glacier takes more than good intentions, and started up. We hiked about two thirds of the way, stopped to take photos, and started back down. On the way, we crossed a few muddy patches, and my husband didn't even realize he'd lost a crampon in the mud until we were nearly back. Lorenzo went looking but never found it. Between my joints and the terrain, none of it was easy, but getting to do something that felt genuinely once-in-a-lifetime with my family made every bit of the effort worth it. On the way back to the ship, my dad and I were talking, and he said something like, "I've waited all my life for this." That's the moment I'll remember most from this entire trip.

That evening we took the shuttle into town. I buy a bracelet in every new country I visit. The Travelers' Century Club counts Svalbard separately from mainland Norway, so finding one there wasn't optional. It's always a bit of a mission, and this time was no exception. Then we went to dinner, where the appetizer was smoked reindeer, seal, and whale. Whale was my favorite of the three, though I'll admit to feeling a little guilty about it. Reindeer was good. Seal had a texture and aftertaste I did not care for and don't need to repeat. Walking back to the ship afterward, it was around 8 p.m. and completely light out, which by that point in the trip meant closing both sets of curtains just to convince our bodies it was bedtime.

The second day, our joints vetoed the planned hike, so I walked into town on my own instead. I found the church, the memorial to the town's founder, and more snowmobile paths than I could count. The grocery store had a separate checkout line just for locals, which delighted me endlessly. Why has Orcas never thought of that. On the way back I stopped at the town's polar bear warning sign, which marks the edge of Longyearbyen. It's there to tell you that once you cross it, you need a guide or a gun, since that's genuinely bear country past that point. We pulled out of Svalbard around 3:30 that afternoon, heading for Iceland.

If people ask me what my favorite country is, I always say it depends what you're asking about: scenery, food, people, history. For twenty-plus years, New Zealand has been my answer for scenery, and it's still an extremely close second. But Norway just took the top spot. I wasn't prepared for how much it would get to me.

Our last real stop was Isafjordur, where we'd booked a whale watching tour that got cancelled an hour before departure because of weather. We'd had almost the exact same thing happen to us in Reykjavik back in 2010, so I suppose we should have anticipated it happening again. There wasn't much to see in town, so we spent the day on the ship instead. The one interesting feature was the Troll's Seat right outsie our cabin window. From the Westfjords website:

The story goes that a troll was rushing home to avoid being turned to stone by the morning sunlight. After running swiftly and arriving early, she sat and rested with her aching feet in the fjord. What was left was the peninsula of Ísafjörður town between her feet, the deep harbour where her feet had been, and the “seat” where her backside had been. Either that or it’s a hanging valley left over from the last Ice Age.

That night we had a joint family dinner, everyone together. Before we ate, my dad raised his glass, and the rest of us followed. Two words: "To family."

We flew home the next day without any issues, and that was it. Best trip we've taken as a family, hands down.