What does summer look like in one of the most northern countries on Earth?
That is the question I should have asked myself when packing for our trip. But I didn’t.
“It’s summer after all!” I thought, shoving shorts and T-shirts into my backpack. I wasn’t even planning on bringing my jacket, just a thin fleece and a light poncho for rain. At some point, common sense prevailed and I looked up the weather in Norway for the following week. The forecast made absolutely no sense – 40 to 60-degree range with daily rain. It was 90 degrees in Chicago at that moment and the sidewalks were melting. I was having trouble visualizing what 40 degrees feels like. Should I bring pants or is that an overkill? I googled “clothes Norway July” and was told, in no uncertain terms, that I must pack everything and expect any weather. It might feel like spring, or fall, or winter, and it might feel all of these seasons in the span of just a few days in what is technically summer in Norway.
Still in complete denial, we messaged Victor’s aunt who lives in Norway. “July?” she said, “Oh, we’ve had snowstorms in July. All flights were canceled, some roads closed, and many areas completely snowed in! But it might be nice and warm! Around 60 degrees… You never know, it's hard to predict the weather around here.”
“Fine,” I thought, “I’ll take a few pairs of pants. And a jacket.”
And that was the jacket that I am wearing in 99% of all the pictures we took in Norway because July in Norway is a lot of things, but it’s not summer. After a few days in Bergen, I ended up buying myself mittens. For those of you who know how much I despise clothes shopping, this should be a clue to how cold I really was. A vast majority of my packed t-shirts never saw the light of day, unless it was layered underneath a long-sleeved shirt, sweater, and jacket.
But the cold wasn’t the major obstacle to my enjoyment of this strange version of “summer”. It was the rain. The first three days we spent in Bergen were mostly overcast skies with frequent sprinkles and occasional heavy showers. We took a free city walking tour and the guide told us that Bergen is the rainiest city in Norway, with over 260 rainy days per year. Just for comparison, Seattle, where my sister lived for many years and constantly complained of drizzle and grey skies, only gets 37 inches of rainfall annually, while Bergen gets 88 inches! Once we left the city, there was significantly less rain, but way more weather-related surprises!
It snowed on July 5th. It doesn’t matter how many times I say this sentence out loud, it still makes no sense. We were driving through the absolutely gorgeous Jotunheimen National Park to Aurland and outside the window, where there should have been glaciers, rivers, lakes, valleys, and mountain peaks, there was a thick blanket of fog and snowflakes, elegantly floating down through the mist. We made frequent stops and even though it was hard to see anything through the fog, just standing by a tall bank of snow with snowflakes dancing around my head was a surreal experience in the middle of summer. We were lucky that a few days before we had already driven down this scenic road and took some pictures. It was disappointing still, but as the day went on and we explored an ancient stave church in Borgund and ate strawberries purchased on the side of a road, things started to look up. Looking back at our pictures of that day, it seems that we somehow experienced winter, spring, and then summer all in a span of 8 hours.
This was not the last time we were foiled by fog. We had a few hikes where we braved cold, mud, and rain, but heavy fog made it impossible to see the stunning views that Norway is popular for. One of the longest hikes, Bessengen Trail in Jotunheimen National Park, will even get its own blog post a bit later. But the interesting thing is that we were not even particularly unlucky – this is standard for summer tourism in Norway. Looking through video blogs, it seems like every single hiker experienced exactly what we did with reduced visibility and challenging navigation in higher mountains and fjords. In fact, we were fortunate in how many sunny, warm, and pleasant days we had while exploring this country known for volatile and unpredictable weather patterns.
That was the first lesson we learned about Norway – it didn’t matter how many incredible sights there were or how tightly packed your itinerary was or how long you were willing to hike, if the weather didn’t cooperate, you were not going to see a single thing. Some of the travelers we met had more time to spend in Norway and were able to be flexible and wait out the occasional bad weather. Others, seeing how expensive travel through Norway is, tried to rush through on a limited budget and with inadequate time, only to be hindered by the whims of the weather.
As for the locals, they walked around in shorts despite the cold weather, swam in the Norwegian Sea despite the freezing water, hiked up and down mountains despite the rain, and never seemed much bothered by the fog or snow in July. Being able to live in Norway and experience all the natural beauty year-round, they are truly the lucky ones. And for the visitors to truly experience Norway, you need time, money, and a bit of luck.
