Stavanger; Friday, 30 May, 2025

After rolling off the ferry the bus continued with the final part of it’s journey along another spectacular combination of bridges and tunnels until we popped up out of the final tunnel close to the centre of Stavanger.

We arrived at the central station where I grabbed my luggage and walked the 10 minutes or so down to the harbourside and my hotel for the night, which turned out, once again, to be on the harbourside with views out to a cruise ship, albeit on this occasion not obscured by an island but just yards across the water.

Having dropped off my stuff in my room and freshened up I headed down to the restaurant as this was a Home Hotel and Fika was being served (albeit with a problem with the coffee machine and only a couple of slices of carrot cake left.), so it didn’t take long to finish.

From the hotel I headed back into town to pick up a bus out towards the Hafrsfjord, located to the west of the city centre. A quick look on the map had shown there were a couple of sights dotted around the edge of the fjord, as well as a 4Km walking route that runs along the side of the fjord, so I decided to spend a bit of time exploring that.

The fjord is the site in 872 of the Battle of Hafrsfjord which saw King Harald Fairhair (he of the statue in Haugesund I’d seen yesterday), be victorious and with it unite Norway into a single kingdom, and part way around the walk I came across the Sverd i fjell or Swords is Rocks which is a sculpture of three 10m high swords wedged firmly into the rocks on the edge of the fjord at the point it’s closest to the centre of Stavanger as a monument to the battle.

I continued my walk around the fjord ending at an Iron Age burial mound which whilst not much to see does offer a particularly spectacular viewpoint over the fjord, and a very convenient bus stop for the bus straight back into the centre of town and over to the hotel in time for dinner.

After dinner I headed back out again for a wander around town, taking advantage of the almost clear blue skies to get some photos in during golden hour as I walk around the historic harbour and up into Gamle Stavanger – the historic heart of the old city. From there I continued wandering and eventually made my way up to the Byparken and the large lake there before heading back down past the cathedral and up to the Valberg Tower high above the harbour just as the sun was setting.

From there it was thankfully a very short, if steep, walk down to the quayside, my hotel and the welcoming embrace of a comfy bed.