I’ve said it before and I’m not ashamed to say it again—once you’ve seen a glacier or two you’ve seen them all, lol. Obviously every experience will be different but at this point in my life I’ve seen glaciers 4-5x in different parts of the world so it’s not super important to me to see it again. However, being in this part of Norway, it was the closest drive from the farmhouse (about an hour) so this is what we did today.
Nigardsbreen Glacier is the largest in continental Europe and hikes on the glacier must be booked in advance. We didn’t have a desire to hike on the glacier but didn’t mind walking as close as possible to it which you don’t need to make a reservation for.
In Google Maps, it’s best to enter in “Breheimsenteret” which will take you to the glacier visitor center/museum. Here you can inquire about park info, use facilities, grab some food and see a museum display (I skipped this). Then the drive to the parking lot to walk to the glacier is about ten minutes away after paying a toll (credit card is fine). Alternatively you can also walk from the visitor center but it is a very long walk (probably two hours and not paved; more rocky trails).
If you do go the parking lot at Nigardsbreen, you have the option to walk from here to the glacier or take a boat across the lake to save about 30 min. of walking. You can pay on the boat by credit card (was about $7.50 USD roundtrip and you can also pay a little less for one way $5 USD). If you’re super fit, have great waterproof shoes with a good grip, then by all means go for the walk! You might need to walk over puddles, streams, and wet rocks which is why people may opt to do the boat first instead.
The boat is a very short ride, just a few minutes, but a lovely view of the landscape.
After you get to the other side, it’s about a mile walk to the glacier. That doesn’t sound long except it’s on large and small rocks. If it’s raining, be careful as it’ll be slippery! Luckily no rain on our day but I know I wouldn’t have done this if I was wet as my sneakers don’t have great grip and the rocks are smooth. If you have walking sticks bring them! Not totally necessary but good for people who have limited mobile issues or not sure of their footing. Families can definitely do this hike; it’s just a matter of what shoes you have and the weather and level of fitness.
We only walked about a half mile towards the glacier before deciding to turn back. Mainly due to someone in the group who has mobility issues. But since we’ve seen glaciers before it wasn’t super important to us to get up and close to it. We spent about 2-3 hours here in total (accounting for waiting for boat time/walking time/visitor center time). We also decided not to go all the way as we also wanted to visit the other glacier nearby, Bergsetbreen. If you’re only doing one I’d say go all the way for sure but we wanted to save energy for the other one!
We stopped by the visitor center again for a snack (basic pizza which was ok) before heading over to Bergset (put that in Google Maps for the route). It’s about ten minutes from the center but unfortunately for us when we arrived it started to rain! So we never did the hike but this is the info on it:
I also snapped a couple of pics of the beginning of the hike. Parking lot is small but honestly this time of year (late June) is supposed to be high season but we never had trouble (so far, knock on wood) with finding parking.
Since we had time to kill before dinner, we ended up driving to REMA 1000, the local supermarket, to stock up on snacks for the road. We also took a nice walk by the fjords in Sogndal—put in Jungelkattkygofjæra to Google Maps and you’ll find a nice paved stretch of a walking area (probably more than two miles roundtrip if you walk the entire length).
There is a small parking lot right next to the highway 55 on the left where you can park and have a stroll.