![]() ![]() ![]() The road climbed higher with each passing kilometre and the land seemed increasingly beset with drama all the way into the small town of Sandnessjøen. A few years later, in the 1940s, nearly 150,000 prisoners and the unemployed were given the no-less-challenging task of taming the coastline with the Kystriksveien.īeyond Brønnøysund, I drove through an elemental landscape of rock and ice, water and hills. In 1939, unemployed youth were put to work constructing the 108km Sognefjellet road across the roof of Norway and through what is now Jotunheimen National Park. And where we can't build a tunnel, we send a ferry."īack in the mid-20th Century, Larsen told me, road-building projects were about building character as much as they were about building a nation. We build roads in places that others think are impossible. "We have the longest road tunnels in the world. "In Norway, if there is an obstacle, like a mountain or a body of water, we build a road over it or around it, a bridge across it or a tunnel under it," said Larsen. However, as the country turned wilder and signs of human presence receded, it quickly became clear that to build any roads along this fractured coastline was surely a triumph of human ingenuity and perseverance. Beyond Steinkjer, where Norway narrowed and headed for the Arctic, the Kystriksveien cut across an increasingly bare and sparsely inhabited land. As I drove north from Stiklestad, the gentle, rural road hugged the water's edge to the provincial town of Steinkjer. ![]() "If Mount Everest was in Norway," Stiklestad historian Mette Larsen told me, "We would have built a road to the summit."Īt first, it was difficult to imagine what she meant. Museums across the country construct exhibitions around the phrase, telling how Norway was tamed and made habitable. "We won the land" is something of a national mantra. Where Norway's leaders through the centuries used the story of Stiklestad to unify the country – building a strong national identity around the narrative of a united, independent and Christian country that had left behind its medieval past – its road builders and pioneers later stared down a forbidding Arctic and sub-Arctic climate and the challenges posed by a beautiful, but inhospitable terrain to chisel out routes like the Kystriksveien. Stiklestad was a fitting place for me to begin my journey, because the Kystriksveien that unfurls away to the north also goes to the heart of how Norwegians see themselves and their nation.įew, if any, countries in Europe overcame such formidable challenges as Norway in settling the land within their borders. In 1164, Pope Alexander III confirmed Olav's sainthood, and the site of the battle – along with Trondheim's cathedral, where Olav's tomb remains – has been a place of pilgrimage ever since. Despite his apparent defeat, Olav and his death became the rallying cry for the spread of Christianity and a turning point in the struggle for a unified Norway, with the battle marking the beginning of the end for Viking Norway and its feuding chiefs. It was here, in 1030, that the Christian King Olav Haraldsson was killed by a Viking army. Stiklestad is where the story of modern Norway began. It was perhaps appropriate, therefore, that my road trip began, like so many European journeys, at a place of ancient pilgrimage. Along such a coast, it seems impossible that a road should exist here at all. Seeming to wrap itself around the country like a protective shield from the freezing Arctic, Norway's coastline appears to have shattered under the strain, riven as it is with islands and fjords cutting deep fissures inland. The Scandinavian nation is blessed with one of the most beautiful yet difficult stretches of coast in Europe. Connecting the two, the Kystriksveien – a route also known as the Coastal Way or Fv17 – charts a sinuous path along the coast, bucking and weaving along rugged contours all the way to the Arctic. At the other is the spare, serene beauty of the north: a world of glaciers, ice-bound mountains and empty, far horizons. ![]() It's also one of the most beautiful road trips on the planet.Īt one end is the quiet sophistication of central Norway, with its perfectly manicured meadows and oxblood-red wooden cabins. Norway's coastal road from the town of Stiklestad to the Arctic city of Bodø is a 670km journey between two very different worlds. ![]()
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