It was a glimpse of a fjord and a flash of an iconic red farmhouse through the SAS airplane window that signaled to my brain that we’d arrived. That was Norway down there. The last time I’d visited, I was here for very different reasons: a long walk along an ancient pilgrimage route, then a few late July days in Bergen. This visit was full of not just new places (Finnskogen, Longyearbyen, and Oslo) but adventures I couldn’t even believe I was about to experience.
The itinerary I kept glancing at on my phone — crafted by the Oslo-based Up Norway — said things like “traverse glaciers, frozen lakes, and towering mountains” and “check in to your hyper-modern cabins in the canopy” or “reminder: do not leave hotel without polar bear protection.” My mind just couldn’t catch up to my reality until the jolt of wheels touching the runway thrust me out of my reverie and straight into the fact that I was here.
Ahead of me were eight days expertly planned to unfold in a sequence of fog-draped forests in Finnskogen first, then Svalbard’s treeless tundra and remote radio outposts, and finally a flashy evening in Oslo in the trendy Tjuvholmen district. I knew all of it had a warning label: prepare to be transformed. That’s just Up Norway’s style. But surely there was no number of reads of my itinerary that could have conveyed how it would truly feel to live it.
From Oslofjord to the Forest of the Finns
With my mind still catching up to the surreality of this epic adventure now in progress, it felt like I blinked and was no longer wrestling my pack into the shuttle at Oslo Airport Gardermoen but two hours north and east, skirting the Swedish border. Thick conifer forests, freshly harvested wheat fields, and vast blue lakes appeared and disappeared in the fog as we drove. My destination was Gjesåsen, a small agricultural community in the heart of Finnskogen and home to my treetop base for the next two nights: PAN Treetop Cabins.
This part of eastern Norway is known among Norwegians for its endless boreal forest and thriving wildlife — moose, wolves, bear, and lynx — but also as a historic refuge for the Forest Finn culture, migrants who came over from Finland and settled the area in the 1600s. They brought with them their slash-and-burn farming practices, chimney-less smokehouses and saunas, and heirloom recipes like motti (a roasted-oat porridge), sipu (a stew of lightly salted pork, potatoes, and milk), and hillo (crushed lingonberries mixed with roasted oat flour).
Our first item on the itinerary in Finnskogen was the new Forest Finn Museum in Svullrya, where we were greeted by many of the culture’s proudest torchbearers, including Dag Raaberg, its director, who told me, proudly, that he’s been lobbying for funding for this museum for nearly two decades. Glancing around at the exhibits, most of which were still in production, and the gorgeous timber-and-glass structure that contains them all, I couldn’t help but feel proud right along with him — proud that a culture so overlooked and yet so special finally had a chance to tell its own story in its own way.
The health and wellness resort Finnskogtoppen nearby also waves the Forest Finn flag, offering its guests and day visitors a chance to cozy up around the fire for storytelling with Marit Høvik, a woman who instantly earned my respect when she mentioned she lives in an off-grid cabin in the woods by herself, hunts and gathers all of her own food, and devotes her life to studying and sharing about the Forest Finn culture. Through her, we learned about the Forest Finn’s myths and mysticism, heard their music, and came to understand their deep respect for and connection to nature. In Høvik’s words, “These were people who not only lived in the forest, but they were of it, with it, part of it.”
The rest of my two all-too-short days in Finnskogen were spent paddling down its rivers in a canoe, then pulling ashore and accepting coffee stirred with an ashen stick from the fire it was just brewed over: bonfire coffee, or bål in Norwegian, my Spreke Opplevelser guide told me. Dinners were farm-to-table, made with the freshest local ingredients — including everything from lingonberry jams and sauces to potatoes, venison, and moose — and often candlelit so as not to take away from the Nordic light transforming the sky through the window. In between, there were soaks in PAN’s fire-warmed hot tub surrounded by the pines and, often, to the soundtrack of soft rain and gentle birdsong.
Refreshed and ready for Norway’s far north
Only the intrigue of a place like Svalbard could pull me away from Finnskogen. From Gjesåsen, we followed the same scenic route back to Oslo Airport for our flight north to Longyearbyen. The three-hour journey, when the clouds parted, revealed stunning aerial views — first continental Norway, then the wind-swept Arctic Ocean, and finally the boundless landscapes of Svalbard.
At first glance, Longyearbyen looked like a temporary town, tossed together in a rush. Its colorful timber houses perched on stilts above the permafrost seemed scattered as if the town planner had been on leave when it was all built. The dramatic mountainscapes surrounding the town still bore the marks of World War II German bombing raids and a century of mining operations.
This striking setting — home to a rotating mix of transplants, seasonal workers, and students — is Svalbard’s capital, a hub where science, mining, and tourism converge. It’s where the shops, hotels, restaurants, and cafés mimic places far less remote. Often, I’d have to remind myself that I was 600 miles from the North Pole. The well-stocked grocery aisles; Fjällräven-, Merrell-, and Helly Hansen-stocked racks at the outdoor stores; and a Michelin-star-worthy 14-course meal at Huset made it easy to forget.
Outdoors, it was much easier to remember. Reindeer graze, polar bear warning signs mark the town’s perimeter, and glaciers catch the sun down the valley, while avalanche nets and beached snowmobiles hint at what’s required come wintertime. With just one evening and a day before heading deeper into the Arctic wilderness, I made it my mission to take in as much of Longyearbyen as I could: a hot cocoa at Café Huskies, a speedy visit to the North Pole Expedition Museum, and an evening of reindeer stew and storytelling at Camp Barentz.
The next morning, I steered a sled dog team across the tundra with Green Dog Svalbard and then stood ashore watching a pod of belugas surface in the white-capped sea as my boat to Isford Radio pulled in.
Getting remote as it gets at Isfjord Radio
Isfjord Radio is a 1930s radio station converted into an adventure lodge by Basecamp Explorer. Accessible by boat in summer and by snowmobile once the fjord freezes, it sits utterly alone in polar bear country. Here, days are dictated by weather and plans kept deliberately loose: maybe a RIB boat ride to glaciers, maybe a day-long hike to see seals, or maybe an entire day of doing absolutely nothing. If storms or fog rolled in, there was always the fjord-facing sauna to visit, a bracing polar plunge into the Barents Sea for the brave, or a book to curl up with indoors.
One rare, fog-free day gave us a window for a boat excursion to the Esmark Glacier, where belugas and a lone walrus surfaced along the way. Our guide gestured to some cliffs we were passing, streaked with vertical ribbons of sedimentary rock. They’re as old as 400 million years, he told us, so old Earth’s own plates shifting had thrust this uber-ancient rock, once buried under the surface, skyward again. Then he mentioned the dinosaur prints found in the younger layers — as in 125 million years — nearby. My eyes were saucers.
My awe only deepened as we approached the glacier itself, a thick, cracked wedge of white pressed against dark mountains and ancient stone, hints of icy blue shimmering in the midday sun. The boat’s engine cut, and we passed around our lunches — freeze-dried chicken tikka for me. Sitting in the silence, I could suddenly hear the gush of meltwater flowing out of the glacier into the sea, as if a faucet had been left on. I was stunned and sobered all at once: my eyes were witnessing our glaciers melting.
The reality of a changing climate hit me even harder the next day, when nonstop rain canceled a planned full-day hike to the seals’ favorite spot to come ashore. As our guide delivered the news, he explained that Svalbard, a landscape defined by desert-like dryness, now receives more precipitation and more extreme rainfall than ever. Glancing out the rain-pattered window and seeing torrents of mud streak down the closest mountainside, I realized that missing my hike was trivial compared with what this place itself is in the process of losing.
Back to Oslo but not the same
Returning to glossy Oslo after Svalbard felt surreal. Hiking boots gave way to heels, down jackets to dresses, and cozy cabins to see-and-be-seen restaurants. Yet even as I sat with a burger and fries at Sommerro House’s Ekspedisjonshallen restaurant, I couldn’t shake the thought that these now grease-stained hands had steered a pack of sled dogs, my tongue knew the taste of freshly trapped seal and heirloom Forest Finn recipes. I’d sipped bonfire coffee after a day paddling in Finnskogen, and my ears knew the sound of a glacier melting or the bowed lyre of a Forest Finn tune. This trip had transformed me, in ways obvious and in ways still settling in.
Norway, though I’d been before, meant something more to me now. Not only because I’d literally seen more but also because I’d gotten under its skin, witnessed its wounds, and met its cultural torchbearers. This wasn’t a tick on the bucket list; it was a deep dive into landscapes, subcultures, and extremes that challenged my sense of comfort and luxury. It taught me that luxury isn’t limited to five-star opulence, but that it can sometimes mean drinkable glacier water from a tap in an off-grid radio outpost, starting the day with a polar plunge instead of a pour-over, or staring up at the pollution-free starry night sky just before you fall asleep.
This journey pressed home for me that places and people shift at different speeds: glaciers are receding faster than anyone wants to admit, the Forest Finn culture hovers between preservation and loss, and Oslo races forward into the future. As a whole, it’s these contrasts that no laid-out itinerary at the start could have prepared me for — a reminder that transformation doesn’t come from crossing items off a bucket list, but from allowing a place to change you, all while it’s changing too.
