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Green northern lights over the mountains of Flakstad in Lofoten

Northern Norway

Above the Arctic Circle the distances get longer, the roads get emptier and the light stops behaving. In summer it never gets dark; in winter it barely gets light, and the sky does something else instead.

Northern Norway covers the counties of Nordland and Troms and Finnmark. It holds some of the country's best-known landscapes — Lofoten's peaks rising straight from the sea, the wild outer coast of Senja, the Lyngen Alps — and some of its emptiest roads.

When to go

Summer is the season for driving. From late May to mid-July the midnight sun means you can drive, hike and photograph at any hour, and campsites and ferries run their full timetables. September brings autumn colours, fewer people and the first real chance of northern lights. Winter trips are possible, but they are a different kind of trip: short days, winter roads and a plan built around the weather.

Distances

Everything is further than it looks. The drive from Bodø to Tromsø is more than 550 kilometres and a full day, and that is before the detours. Most good routes here combine driving with at least one ferry. Lofoten, for example, is reached from Bodø by a three-hour car ferry or by road over the Lofast connection from the mainland.

Guides for this area

Travel tips for this area

Practical for all of Norway

Rules and costs that apply wherever you drive.

All travel tips