Driving towards Odda. Hike to the troll tongue Trolltunga, a spectacular rock tongue hanging 700 meters above a lake. Info about parking and the hike itself.
Travelogue Norway 2021 Trolltunga
We spend the next day driving to Odda.
Short stop for a swim in the wonderfully clear and cool waters of Øvre Vatjønn. Is this the bay of a river? Or a lake? You can never be sure in Norway. I often couldn’t even tell at first glance if it was salt water (a fjord) or fresh water.View of the lake VågslivatnetShort stop at the Røldal stavkyrkje. Stave churches, i.e. wooden churches built with a method with vertical poles on which the roof rests, are very common in Norway. This one is rather inconspicuous from the outside, but inside it is richly decorated and an important place of pilgrimage.Shortly before Odda the twin waterfall Låtefossen. Photos, however, can hardly convey the experience of this waterfall.Our guide book says about Odda: “After … pretty fjord towns, post-industrial Odda comes as something of a shock.”. For us it looked really nice. Most tourists use Odda only as a base camp for the hike to Trolltunga.
The hike to the troll tongue Trolltunga is already organizationally a challenge. The information on the official Trolltunga homepage is as extensive as it is confusing. There are endless combinations of parking spaces along with taxis, buses … We went to the parking P2 Skjeggedal. If you walk from there, it is 27 kilometres there and back and 1,200 metres in altitude. If you take a shuttle bus from there to the vicinity of the parking lot P3, as we did, the distance is reduced to 20 kilometers and 790 meters of altitude difference. The costs for one day parking and two persons shuttle bus amounted to 900 crowns or 90 euros.
The hike is technically at most moderately difficult, but due to the length, fitness is required.
Compared to Preikestolen and also Kjeragbolten, this hike is quite boring in terms of scenery and also in terms of difficulty. Luckily we met a Norwegian couple with whom we got on well and had a good chat.The troll tongue Trolltunga itself is of course spectacular, both from the shape of the rock tongue and from the surroundings. In terms of thrills, it is relatively harmless, at least compared to Kjeragbolten, as it is very wide. And even if you sit on the edge, then the slight backward slope helps you feel safe.
By the way, one often sees photos in the internet where one does not look from diagonally above on the Trolltunga as in our photos, but from closer and almost exactly from the side, which on the one hand looks great, especially if one jumps, but on the other hand does not show the whole great panorama. These photos, as far as I can tell, are all from guided tours. They have a photographer with them, who rappels down next to the Trolltunga and takes pictures from a position where you normally can’t get to. Maybe you could even get there, especially with some climbing experience. But then I didn’t want to take any risks just to get somehow different photos.
