Skjolden

Wittgenstein's hut at the head of the Sognefjord, and a stave church that admits fifty an hour.

Skjolden is a village of a few hundred people at the very end of the Sognefjord — two hundred kilometres from the open sea, and the furthest inland a cruise ship can go anywhere in the world. That is the whole appeal and also the whole problem: the ship arrives somewhere very small, and the things people have come to Sogn for are spread along forty kilometres of fjord road. One of them is a philosopher's hut half an hour's walk away. Another is a UNESCO stave church that lets fifty people an hour through the door.

Going ashore

The quay is the village. Everything on route A is inside three kilometres of the gangway and nothing on it needs a ticket. The Urnes route does not walk: Urnes stave church is about forty kilometres by road round the head of the fjord, and it has to be the ship's coach, a taxi, or a taxi to Solvorn and the small ferry across. Before you plan on it, read the numbers the church itself publishes — twenty-five people per guided tour, fifty an hour into the building, one bus group an hour, and no group discount. A ship of two thousand does not fit through that door, and the church says plainly that the limits can mean waiting.

The hikes

1. 01

   Wittgenstein's hut, by the viewpoint

   6 km · 4 hours · 160 m up

   The village on foot, and the one thing here nobody expects. Ludwig Wittgenstein built a hut above the fjord at Skjolden in 1914 and came back to it for twenty years; it was taken down in the fifties and rebuilt on its own foundations in 2019. The route takes in the farm bakery, the viewpoint above the village and the hut, and none of it costs anything.

2. 02

   Round Eidsvatnet, the lake

   5 km · 2.5 hours · 30 m up

   The level walk, and the one that works when the shoulder above the village does not. Eidsvatnet is the lake behind Skjolden — a kilometre and a half of green water on the flat land between the fjord and the mountains, with a farm road along its south shore and a path round the north. The hut is visible across the water from the north side, which is the view Wittgenstein's neighbours had of him. Nothing on it climbs: the quay, the lake outlet and the head of the lake are all within four metres of each other.

3. 03

   Urnes stave church — the transport day

   2 km · 5 hours · 100 m up

   The oldest stave church in Norway and the only one on the UNESCO list, on the far shore of Lustrafjorden about forty kilometres round by road. It is not a walk from the ship and this route does not pretend otherwise. What it does instead is print the numbers the church publishes about how many people it will take in an hour, because on a cruise day those decide the visit.

What's inside

Look inside

Pages 1–6 are in the free sample. 16 pages in the full guide.

What the guide covers

• Skjolden kai
• Hauge gård
• Sengaberget
• Eidsvatnet
• Wittgenstein-huset
• Lustrafjorden
• Ornes
• Urnes stavkyrkje
• Feigumfossen
• Sognefjorden

3 routes · 13 km · 16 pages

When to go

The binding date here is not the weather but the church: Urnes opens 2 May and closes 30 September, and outside that season the Urnes route has nothing at the end of it. Inside the season it runs 10:30–17:45 every day and is closed on 17 May. Route B, round the lake, works all year for anyone who is here; route A's path over the shoulder is roots and rock and muddy after rain, and the hut path is under snow from November. Two things worth knowing about the wider valley if you have a car: Feigumfossen, a 218-metre waterfall about twenty kilometres away, is visible from the road to Urnes and 45 minutes up on foot; and Molden, the classic viewpoint over Lustrafjorden, is a 1,107-metre mountain and a full day rather than an afternoon. Neither is reachable on foot from the ship, and this guide does not route to either.