Narvik; Friday, 03 June, 2022

The hotel had very kindly let us have a late checkout as our bus wasn’t until 1pm, so we were able to just leave things in the room before heading out for a wander round town.

We headed down the hill into the centre of Narvik and took in the main square before heading over the road to visit the Kreigsmuseum.

Narvik, and the Ofotfjord played a key role in the Second World War, and were heavily fought over both during the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940 and then throughout the conflict. The waters round here are the final resting place of a large number of ships.

The museum tells the story of the battles for Narvik and the impact on the town, including artefacts recovered from the Fjord and personal recollections of people who were here are the time.

After taking in the museum we made our way back to the hotel to grab our stuff, check out and then head back down to the bus station, located underneath a shopping centre, behind the museum.

The bus left Narvik on time and started its 230Km, 4 hour journey north. The first part of the journey is through town before heading into the classic Norwegian combination of tunnel through cliffs that then drops you out onto a stunning bridge that crosses a Fjord. In this instance the Hålogalandbrua which crossed the fjord at the point where the Rombaksfjord and the Herjangsfjord split off from the main Ofotfjord.

We then followed the Herjangsfjord up it’s length before reaching the town of Bjervik at it’s head. Here the bus really filled up and despite being a double deck coach there were only a handful of seats left as we climbed away from the Fjord and into the mountains, the journey was spectacular with the snowmelt waterfalls cascading down all the mountains and hills around us.

About 90 minutes after leaving Narvik we stopped at the town of Setermoen where a relief bus started alongside us, but even that was already full. We swapped the lead with that bus most of the way towards Tromø, though at the last stop it would get away several minutes ahead of us and was actually timetabled to get into Tromsø ahead of us.

We continued north and at the next stop at Bardufoss we ended up with a completely full bus. Thankfully nobody was left behind, and the next stop was Buktamoen where several local lines met the bus and people were able to change onto different routes, meaning the bus started to empty out. This was also the main pit stop of the journey, where we stopped for 10 minutes allowing people to freshen up, before the final 122Km and 2 hours down into Tromsø