The Sognefjord, the king of the fjords, is the longest fjord adventure in Norway. The fjord is 204 kilometres long and the side fjords are great for kayaking.
The Aurlandsfjord, Nærøyfjord, Fjærlandsfjord and Lustrafjord are four side fjords of the Sognefjord that are great to explore from a kayak.
The Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord are part of UNESCO World Heritage. You can join guided kayak-trips on all these fjords. Here you can read about guided kayak trips on the Aurlandsfjord and Nærøyfjord. We recommend you to use a guide.
On July 14th 2005, the Western Norwegian Fjords represented by the Geirangerfjord and the Nærøyfjord with surrounding country, were included in Unesco’s World Heritage list.
The landscape, considered to be among the most scenically outstanding fjord areas on the planet, was inscribed in the list due to it’s unique natural quality and beauty.
Norway has a total of eight areas in Unesco’s World Heritage List, four of them are in the Fjords.
Read about recommended Hotels, Spa & Bath Hotels and recommended places to stay overnight in the western fjords in Norway, places that are special and great in different ways.
There are ten restaurants that have awarded Michelin Stars and MICHELIN Guide’s Point Of View in Western Norway (Updated for 2023). Eight of the Michelin Restaurants are in Stavanger and two are in Bergen.
The Michelin Guide also offers a list of recommended hotels in Western Norway.
The combination of the beautiful nature, the activities you can do in all four seasons and a great place to stay is unique.
Read about some of the best view points and great places for photography and filming in the fjords and in Western Norway.
Take a short detour by car. Go hiking. Or take a Fjord Cruise. These are probably some of the best viewpoints in Norway, sorted from north to south.
The prizes are beautiful views and memories for life, and you will get a cool selfie to share with the world. This is a great tool for planning your holiday in the western fjords of Norway.
There are eighteen National Tourist Routes in Norway. Ten of them are located in Western Norway. Common to them all is that the roads are going through some of the wildest and most beautiful scenery that Norway has to offer.
We give you a brief overview of the National Tourist Routes and some other great road trips in Western Norway.
Fill up the car with your gear and take a road trip in Western Norway. Here you can explore the stunning scenery. You can be active and use the nature around you. Or you can also just relax and enjoy the beautiful and wild nature.
Fasten the seat belts and have a fabulous drive along the roads in Western Norway.
The Fjord Guide is a guide to the best known fjords in Western Norway.
Two of the fjords, the Geirangerfjord and the Nærøyfjord, are part of the UNESCO World Heritage. The Sognefjord is the longest fjord in Norway with its 204 kilometres.
The Western Norwegian fjords are rated as the worlds best travel destination by the magazine National Geographic Traveler.
Is it possible to visit the Western Fjords from Oslo, and spend only one day? I do not have any car, how do I get to the fjords? What fjord in Norway do you recommend to visit? What activities can I do in the fjords?
There are many questions on how you travel, where to travel and how long time you need to experience the Western Fjords from Oslo.
We recommend you to visit two UNESCO-protected fjords; the Aurlandsfjord and Nærøyfjord which are branches of the 204 kilometer long Sognefjord. On both of these tours you can travel by train.
Here you can read more about two tours with fjord cruise on the Aurlandsfjord and Nærøyfjord.
Fjords are found in locations where current or past glaciation extended below current sea level.
A fjord is formed when a glacier retreats, after carving its typical U-shaped valley, and the sea fills the resulting valley floor. This forms a narrow, steep sided inlet (in Norway, sometimes deeper than 1300 meters) connected to the sea.
The terminal moraine pushed down the valley by the glacier is left underwater at the fjord’s entrance, causing the water at the neck of the fjord to be shallower than the main body of the fjord behind it.
Here you can read more about what a fjord is and how the Sognefjord was formed.
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
Name
Domain
Purpose
Expiry
Type
__gads
fjords.com
Google advertising cookie set on the websites domain (unlike the other Google advertising cookies that are set on doubleclick.net domain). According to Google the cookie serves purposes such as measuring interactions with the ads on that domain and preventing the same ads from being shown to you too many times.
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Illustrations
Most purposes explained in this notice rely on the storage or accessing of information from your device when you use an app or visit a website. For example, a vendor or publisher might need to store a cookie on your device during your first visit on a website, to be able to recognise your device during your next visits (by accessing this cookie each time).
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Illustrations
A car manufacturer wants to promote its electric vehicles to environmentally conscious users living in the city after office hours. The advertising is presented on a page with related content (such as an article on climate change actions) after 6:30 p.m. to users whose non-precise location suggests that they are in an urban zone.
A large producer of watercolour paints wants to carry out an online advertising campaign for its latest watercolour range, diversifying its audience to reach as many amateur and professional artists as possible and avoiding showing the ad next to mismatched content (for instance, articles about how to paint your house). The number of times that the ad has been presented to you is detected and limited, to avoid presenting it too often.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Illustrations
If you read several articles about the best bike accessories to buy, this information could be used to create a profile about your interest in bike accessories. Such a profile may be used or improved later on, on the same or a different website or app to present you with advertising for a particular bike accessory brand. If you also look at a configurator for a vehicle on a luxury car manufacturer website, this information could be combined with your interest in bikes to refine your profile and make an assumption that you are interested in luxury cycling gear.
An apparel company wishes to promote its new line of high-end baby clothes. It gets in touch with an agency that has a network of clients with high income customers (such as high-end supermarkets) and asks the agency to create profiles of young parents or couples who can be assumed to be wealthy and to have a new child, so that these can later be used to present advertising within partner apps based on those profiles.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Illustrations
An online retailer wants to advertise a limited sale on running shoes. It wants to target advertising to users who previously looked at running shoes on its mobile app. Tracking technologies might be used to recognise that you have previously used the mobile app to consult running shoes, in order to present you with the corresponding advertisement on the app.
A profile created for personalised advertising in relation to a person having searched for bike accessories on a website can be used to present the relevant advertisement for bike accessories on a mobile app of another organisation.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Illustrations
You read several articles on how to build a treehouse on a social media platform. This information might be added to a profile to mark your interest in content related to outdoors as well as do-it-yourself guides (with the objective of allowing the personalisation of content, so that for example you are presented with more blog posts and articles on treehouses and wood cabins in the future).
You have viewed three videos on space exploration across different TV apps. An unrelated news platform with which you have had no contact builds a profile based on that viewing behaviour, marking space exploration as a topic of possible interest for other videos.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Illustrations
You read articles on vegetarian food on a social media platform and then use the cooking app of an unrelated company. The profile built about you on the social media platform will be used to present you vegetarian recipes on the welcome screen of the cooking app.
You have viewed three videos about rowing across different websites. An unrelated video sharing platform will recommend five other videos on rowing that may be of interest to you when you use your TV app, based on a profile built about you when you visited those different websites to watch online videos.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Illustrations
You have clicked on an advertisement about a “black Friday” discount by an online shop on the website of a publisher and purchased a product. Your click will be linked to this purchase. Your interaction and that of other users will be measured to know how many clicks on the ad led to a purchase.
You are one of very few to have clicked on an advertisement about an “international appreciation day” discount by an online gift shop within the app of a publisher. The publisher wants to have reports to understand how often a specific ad placement within the app, and notably the “international appreciation day” ad, has been viewed or clicked by you and other users, in order to help the publisher and its partners (such as agencies) optimise ad placements.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Illustrations
You have read a blog post about hiking on a mobile app of a publisher and followed a link to a recommended and related post. Your interactions will be recorded as showing that the initial hiking post was useful to you and that it was successful in interesting you in the related post. This will be measured to know whether to produce more posts on hiking in the future and where to place them on the home screen of the mobile app.
You were presented a video on fashion trends, but you and several other users stopped watching after 30 seconds. This information is then used to evaluate the right length of future videos on fashion trends.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Illustrations
The owner of an online bookstore wants commercial reporting showing the proportion of visitors who consulted and left its site without buying, or consulted and bought the last celebrity autobiography of the month, as well as the average age and the male/female distribution of each category. Data relating to your navigation on its site and to your personal characteristics is then used and combined with other such data to produce these statistics.
An advertiser wants to better understand the type of audience interacting with its adverts. It calls upon a research institute to compare the characteristics of users who interacted with the ad with typical attributes of users of similar platforms, across different devices. This comparison reveals to the advertiser that its ad audience is mainly accessing the adverts through mobile devices and is likely in the 45-60 age range.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Illustrations
A technology platform working with a social media provider notices a growth in mobile app users, and sees based on their profiles that many of them are connecting through mobile connections. It uses a new technology to deliver ads that are formatted for mobile devices and that are low-bandwidth, to improve their performance.
An advertiser is looking for a way to display ads on a new type of consumer device. It collects information regarding the way users interact with this new kind of device to determine whether it can build a new mechanism for displaying advertising on this type of device.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
Illustrations
A travel magazine has published an article on its website about the new online courses proposed by a language school, to improve travelling experiences abroad. The school’s blog posts are inserted directly at the bottom of the page, and selected on the basis of your non-precise location (for instance, blog posts explaining the course curriculum for different languages than the language of the country you are situated in).
A sports news mobile app has started a new section of articles covering the most recent football games. Each article includes videos hosted by a separate streaming platform showcasing the highlights of each match. If you fast-forward a video, this information may be used to select a shorter video to play next.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 631
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Illustrations
An advertising intermediary delivers ads from various advertisers to its network of partnering websites. It notices a large increase in clicks on ads relating to one advertiser, and uses data regarding the source of the clicks to determine that 80% of the clicks come from bots rather than humans.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 522
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Illustrations
Clicking on a link in an article might normally send you to another page or part of the article. To achieve this, 1°) your browser sends a request to a server linked to the website, 2°) the server answers back (“here is the article you asked for”), using technical information automatically included in the request sent by your device, to properly display the information / images that are part of the article you asked for. Technically, such exchange of information is necessary to deliver the content that appears on your screen.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 522
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
Illustrations
When you visit a website and are offered a choice between consenting to the use of profiles for personalised advertising or not consenting, the choice you make is saved and made available to advertising providers, so that advertising presented to you respects that choice.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 522
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 369
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 515
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
Number of Vendors seeking consent or relying on legitimate interest: 502
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.