It happened as we were about to start the most iconic part of the Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. We were standing by the train doors, just outside of Myrdal, Norway, gazing out at snow-dappled mountains and anticipating our ride on the scenic Flåmsbana train.
The lilting voice on the speaker said: “The Flåm train is broken. Passengers for Flåm will have to stay on the train and be transferred by bus.”
We had traveled 5 hours from Oslo for the express purpose of taking the scenic train ride to Flåm! We felt like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football away at the last moment.
As we shuffled back to our seats, our holiday vibes deflated, I questioned myself: Should I have booked a Norway in a Nutshell package itinerary? If I had, maybe the company would be taking care of this SNAFU and making sure we’d get to ride the Flåmsbana. As independent travelers, we’d have to figure it out on our own. And I was not at all sure I’d be able to rearrange our trip to get us onto another Flåm train.
I’ll let you know how things turned out for us at the end of this post, but one thing I’ll tell you up front: You definitely can DIY your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. And despite what happened on our trip, I would book this scenic tour à la carte again. It saved us a lot of money.
How to DIY your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary
This scenic loop (or city to city) itinerary is touted as the best way to get an eyeful of all Norway has to offer: fjords, snow-capped mountains, picturesque red barns and rushing wild rivers. For us, Norway in a Nutshell delivered all that and more!
Being addicted to spending less on travel, I of course wanted to save money by booking our Norway in a Nutshell trip on my own. But would booking it DIY end up causing too much hassle? Would I mess up this once-in-a-lifetime experience, just to save a few kronor? Now that I’ve tried it, I’m here to tell you that you, too, can DIY your Norway in a Nutshell itnerary without fear.
What is Norway in a Nutshell?
The phrase “Norway in a Nutshell” sounds like a branded product, and it is. Fjord Tours, which sells the train/boat/bus itinerary as a package, says it launched the Norway in a Nutshell tour in 1982. But you also see the term thrown about — online and in guidebooks — to generically describe the scenic trip that includes the gorgeous mountain towns of Myrdal and Flåm (pronounced something like “floam”).
Basically, a Norway in a Nutshell tour includes one of these basic itineraries:
- Bergen-Flåm-Myrdal-Oslo
- Oslo-Myrdal-Flåm-Bergen
- RT Bergen-Flåm-Bergen
- RT Oslo-Flåm-Oslo
Notice that stop in the middle of each itinerary? Flåm! The Flåmsbana, or Flåm train, is the heart of the Norway in a Nutshell tour. A lot of people talk about the scenic “Oslo to Bergen” railway. But if you didn’t go through Flåm, I’d say you didn’t do Norway in a Nutshell.
No matter which starting and ending points you choose, Norway in a Nutshell involves the same basic elements:
- A scenic modern train ride from your starting city into the mountains of southwestern Norway. You might see a wild river, mountains with snow (even in July), cows and rustic farms.
- A one-hour “most scenic in the world” ride on a historic locomotive between two tiny mountain towns, the (now touristy) Flåm and (still lonely) Myrdal. You’ll have the chance to get out and be misted by a thundering waterfall.
- A two-hour cruise on Nærøyfjord, a drop-dead gorgeous fjord with mountains rising up to dizzying peaks on either side of you.
- It may also include a scenic (but possibly crowded) bus ride to get you from one section of the route to another.
- Another scenic modern train ride to get you from the mountains to your final destination of Oslo or Bergen.
Step 1: Settle on your Norway in a Nutshell route
The two one-way Norway in a Nutshell options take about the same amount of time, since they cover the same distance. But the round trip from Bergen involves a little less travel time than the round trip from Oslo, because Bergen is closer to Flåm.
At first, I thought we would want to do a one-way Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. After all, vacation days are limited. Who has time to backtrack?
However, I eventually decided against a one-way Norway in a Nutshell route for a few reasons:
- We wanted to store our luggage rather than carrying everything with us on the trains, boat and buses.
- We needed to journey onward from Oslo after doing Norway in a Nutshell, so one-way would have required starting in Bergen. However, we were coming from outside Norway. Bergen has fewer international transportation links than Oslo.
- We had already explored Bergen when taking our Havila cruise two years earlier.
- We didn’t want to have to check into a hotel super late at night when arriving at the final destination of the trip.
However, you can’t go wrong choosing any of the basic Norway in a Nutshell itineraries, depending on your preferences and your plan for the rest of your time in Norway.
Step 2: Decide if you want to do Norway in a Nutshell as a day trip, or take your time
No matter where you start and end up, it’s possible to cover the Norway in a Nutshell itinerary as a day trip. However, it will be a loooong day. Long as in:
- Leave Oslo at 8:25 a.m. and arrive in Bergen at 7:25 p.m.
- Leave Oslo at 8:25 a.m., arrive back just after midnight.
- Leave Bergen at 8:30 a.m., arrive Oslo at 10:27 p.m.
- Leave Bergen at 8:30 a.m., arrive back at 6:17 p.m.
Those are all the shortest day trips available on each Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. Some of them don’t allow time to even get lunch on one of the stops (although you can buy food on most of the trains). For some of the itineraries, it’s possible to take an earlier departure train and/or a later final train to give yourself a little more time — with a longer day.
Because I was traveling with my senior citizen parents, I really didn’t want to be checking into a Bergen hotel or an Oslo hotel after midnight. And I didn’t like the idea of rushing through these bucolic, out-of-the way Norwegian towns. So we decided to break Norway in a Nutshell into two days, staying at the utterly charming and historic Fretheim Hotel in Flåm.
Another benefit to our two-day itinerary: We didn’t have to stay in Oslo the night before. Instead, we arrived on the overnight ferry from Copenhagen at 10 a.m. and went straight to the train station.
Step 3: Choose each leg of your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary
Once you’ve chosen your departure and arrival city, you can think about how you want your whole day — or days — to go. Do you want to go directly from train to boat to bus to train, so you can get to bed at a decent hour? Or do you want to build in some breaks?
But how do you know what the options are? Here’s a cheat code for DIYing your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary: Copy the itineraries that FjordTours makes publicly available.
Here’s how:
- Go to the FjordTours homepage.
- Scroll down past the photos of blond people looking dreamily out of vintage train windows, and click the link for the Norway in a Nutshell tour.
- Fill in the boxes with your number (and age) of travelers, starting and ending cities, and the date you want to travel.
- This will bring up the basic itinerary I already referred to, showing the departure time for the initial train, the final train, and the train, bus and boat times in between.
- Customize your itinerary! You don’t have to stick with the schedule FjordTours suggests. When there is a different departure time available, the web site shows you a little drawing of a calendar page, with a link labeled “Change departure time.”
With some help from the FjordTours site, I settled on this two-day Norway in a Nutshell itinerary for my parents, my son and me:
- 12:03 p.m. Depart Oslo via train
- 5:01 p.m. Arrive Myrdal
- 5:22 p.m. Depart Myrdal on Flåm train
- 6:20 p.m. Arrive Flåm
- Overnight in Flam
- 9:30 a.m. Day 2: Leave Flåm on the Nærøyfjord cruise
- 11:30 a.m. Day 2: Arrive Gudvangen
- 11:40 a.m. Day 2: Leave Gudvangen via bus
- 12:26 p.m. Day 2: Arrive Voss
- 4:57 p.m. Leave Voss via train
- 10:27 p.m. Arrive Oslo
Step 4: Book your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary
Now for the slightly harder part of DIYing Norway in a Nutshell! You need to buy the correct train, boat and bus tickets to get you where you need to be at the correct time.
Book the trains
You have a couple of options for buying Norwegian train tickets online: Vy or Entur. I was not able to find these tickets on Rail Europe or Trainline. You can book all the trains for Norway in a Nutshell on Vy or Entur, but note that you have to book the Flåm train specifically. If you book a train from Oslo to Voss, the vintage Flåm train will not be part of that.
Prices for intercity trains in Norway change from day to day. You might pay as little as $25 or as much as $100 for the two legs of the modern train you need to take to complete Norway in a Nutshell. The good news: You can book a flexible fare, which can be changed, or the fully flexible, which can be canceled. I found that Vy is very helpful about canceling and rebooking trains, via their chat feature.
Let’s set a hypothetical day for your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary, round trip from Oslo: Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025. For that day, these are the prices I found online about a month in advance, for flexible (not fully flexible) fares:
F4 Oslo-Myrdal: $53
Flåmsbana, Myrdal-Flåm: $40
F4 Voss-Oslo: $36
You can book Oslo-Myrdal-Flåm as one trip on Vy, for the same price as booking Oslo-Myrdal and Myrdal-Flåm separately.
But be careful: Don’t book Oslo-Voss, or you’ll end up going right through Myrdal without stopping to get on the historic Flåmsbanen.
Book the scenic fjord cruise
After you arrive by train in Flåm, it’s time to take the two-hour boat trip to see the UNESCO World Heritage Nærøyfjord. Buy this ticket from Norway’s Best. The boat departs Flåm twice a day, at 9:30 a.m. and at 2:25 p.m. Or, if you are going in the opposite direction, you can take the boat from Gudvangen to Flåm at 12 p.m. or 5:15 p.m. Either way, the cost is around $60 for adults and half price for kids up 4-15. (3 and under free.)
Book a bus transfer if needed
You’ll end your boat ride in either Gudvangen or Flåm. What you do next depends on which direction you’re heading in.
- If you’re going from Oslo to Bergen, you probably took the boat from Flåm to Gudvangen. Now you need to take the bus to Voss to get the train to Bergen.
- If you’re going Oslo RT, you probably took the boat from Flåm to Gudvangen. Now you need to take the bus either on to Voss or back to Flåm so you can head back toward Oslo by train.
- If you’re going from Bergen to Oslo, you probably took the boat from Gudvangen to Flåm, and you don’t need to take a bus! Your next step will be the Flåm train to Myrdal, then on to Oslo.
- If you’re going Bergen RT, you probably took the boat from Gudvangen to Flåm, and now you need to take the bus back past Gudvangen to Voss, where you’ll board a train for Bergen.
The shuttle operated by Norway’s Best between Gudvangen and Flåm costs about $16 one way. You can buy the ticket in advance online or at the tourist center in Flåm. You can also pay shuttle at boarding, but the bus could be fully booked. One thing I learned once I was there: If you buy a bus ticket for a different timeslot, but then change your mind, the staff may let you ride a different bus — as long as there is space.
If you don’t have a ticket, or if your ticket is for a different time, the staff will probably make you board last. In that case, your party might not be able to sit together.
There is also a public bus, VY 450, running between Gudvangen and Flåm. I’ve found different costs for the 450 depending on if I searched through the Skyss or Vy apps, ranging from $5 to $17 (with seat selection, fully refundable). Like the private shuttle, the public bus takes about half an hour to make the trip.
The major difference as far as I can tell between the private shuttles and the public bus is that the private ones pick you up in the parking lot close to where you get off the ferry. For the public bus, you have to walk out to the bus stop on the road.
There are also both private shuttles and public buses from Gudvangen to Voss. From Voss you can get the train either on to Bergen or back to Oslo. The Norways Best shuttle from Gudvangen to Voss costs $16. The public buses are the Vy 450 (going the opposite direction of the one that takes you to Flåm) for $12-$16, or the Skyss 950, also about $16.
Booking the bus was the most confusing part about DIYing my Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. I was unsure whether to book the public or private bus. I was unsure whether to buy a bus ticket in advance or pay when we got there. And I didn’t know what time I should pick, since I wasn’t sure if we would want to eat lunch in Gudvangen after the ferry.
If I had to do it again, traveling with people of limited mobility, I would have just bought a ticket for the Norway’s Best shuttle. If I was traveling solo, I would have taken the public bus, probably buying my ticket using the Skyss app while waiting at the bus stop.
How much time should you spend in Gudvangen?
If you are taking the boat to Gudvangen and then scheduling an onward bus, you’ll need to know if you want to jump on the first bus that departs, or schedule one for a couple hours later.
Is there anything to do in Gudvangen? The only thing I really noticed was Viking Village. I know, it sounds incredibly cheesy! But before the trip, I happened to watch Conan O’Brien’s travel show, Conan Must Go. In his Norway episode, Coco visits Viking Village. From the show it looks like a realistic re-enactment of medievel Norway, with dedicated employees. My dad, who had wanted to visit a viking museum, would have enjoyed it.
Alas, we weren’t able to visit Viking Village. We ended walking directly from the ferry to the parking lot where buses were picking up tourists. It took us quite some time to figure out which one was the Norway’s Best bus. Our shuttle ended up departing for Flåm about 20 minutes after we arrived in Gudvangen. So with the 30-minute ride, the return trip took us about an hour.
If needed, book lodging
As stated earlier, you can do Norway in a Nutshell in one day. But if you want to break it up over two days, like we did, you’ll need to book lodging along the route. Your two main options are Flåm and Gudvangen. There isn’t any lodging that I know of in Myrdal — it’s just a quiet train station looking down on a rural valley,
Gudvangen is pretty small, with a few hotels and a campground.
Flåm is a much busier tourist hub, but the lodging is still limited. Other than the historic (and spendy) Fretheim Hotel, there’s another hotel and a few rentals within walking distance of the train station. You’d have to get a taxi to drive you to any lodging beyond that.
We stayed at the Fretheim Hotel. It’s certainly convenient. The train station, the fjord ferry and the tourist center are all steps from the hotel’s front door. Even my dad had little trouble getting there with his walker.
The Fretheim is also the perfect alpine Norwegian asthetic. Our room had a balcony with a view of the harbor. In the evening, I saw our ferry docked, waiting to take us down the fjord the next day. In the morning, I woke to the sight of a gigantic cruise ship dwarfing the town.
The one drawback of the Fretheim Hotel is the price. We booked only a few weeks in advance, at high season, and paid $400 per double room for one night. But other times of year, the price may be closer to $200.
How much you can save by DIYing your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary
You can actually save a lot of money by booking your Norway in a Nutshell itinerary on your own.
It’s hard to say definitively, since prices charge day to day. But adding up the three train segments, the fjord cruise and the connecting bus, the Oslo RT Norway in a Nutshell itinerary for the random date of Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025 comes to $200.
Oslo-Myrdal train $46
Myrdal-Flåm vintage train $40
Flåm to Gudvangen scenic cruise $61
Gudvangen to Voss shuttle $16
Voss-Oslo train $37
If you book that same trip, same date, on FjordTours, the cost would be $389.
So a solo adult could save about $189 by booking their own Norway in a Nutshell itinerary. That’s almost half price!
There are factors that could allow you to save even more. If you have seniors or children in your party, for instance. Fjord Tours offers a discount on the pre-arranged tour for children, but none for seniors. But you can book senior rates for the modern train journeys, which would lower those ticket prices.
You also might find value in using a Eurail train pass for the rail portions, if you’re taking trains during other parts of your trip as well. With a Eurail pass, you would pay nothing for the modern train portions of Norway in a Nutshell.
Eurail doesn’t cover the Flåmsbana. But you can get a 10% discount on the Flåmsbana if you hold a Eurail pass.
Drawbacks of booking your own Norway in a Nutshell itinerary?
The main drawback of booking Norway in a Nutshell independently is that it takes time to go to Vy, FjordTours and Norways Best to book all the segments. There’s also the fear factor: I did worry that I might mess up my DIY Nutshell trip.
But what about if something goes wrong while you’re traveling, like what happened to us? The Flåm train we were supposed to ride was cancelled at the last minute! If we had booked a package tour, would the company have made sure we got another chance to ride the Flåm train?
Probably? I don’t actually know. But the tourist office in Flåm is very helpful to self-book travelers.
How I fixed our Norway in a Nutshell trip at the last minute
Here’s how it went down: When we left the F4 in Voss, we waited along with the many other passengers for a bus transfer to Flåm. The bus filled up and left. The staff ended up putting our family in a taxi. (We were glad we had left most of our luggage at a hotel in Oslo and brought only overnight bags!)
When we arrived in Flåm, I went to the tourist office, which hadn’t closed yet. As I expected, the Flåm train for the next day was sold out. But the nice woman working there gave me a hot tip: Check online for open seats early the next morning. Apparently, tour operators tend to hold onto extra seats until the day of.
It worked! At 6 a.m. the next morning, I successfully purchased us four new tickets Flåm to Myrdal. This was the opposite direction from how we were originally planning to take it. But I don’t think the direction makes a difference in the scenery. The seats are not assigned either, so there were no worries about sitting together.
Next, I made new seat reservations for an afternoon train from Myrdal back to Oslo, and canceled our reservations from Voss to Oslo. Later, I contacted Vy to request a refund for the canceled Flåm train. We received a full refund (about $200) one day later.
I showed up at the gorgous breakfast buffet with news everyone in my family was thrilled to hear: “WE ARE GOING ON THE FLAMSBANEN!”
We then took our 10 a.m. fjord tour as previously scheduled, bussed back to Flåm, spent a little time enjoying Flåm, then enjoyed the surreally scenic Flåmsbanen. At Myrdal, we were the only people to disembark. All the other passengers took the round trip ride back to Flåm. It was kind of cool to wait for the train back to Oslo at this lonely mountain platform.
Is it worth it to book your own Norway in a Nutshell tickets?
For the sake of expediency, many people find it worthwhile to pay more to let FjordTours handle all the ticket purchases. But saving almost 50% was worth it to me! If you are traveling with seniors or kids, or if you are using a Eurail pass, it may be worth it to book your own Norway in a Nutshell itinerary.
If you end up spending starting or ending your Norway in a Nutshell trip in Oslo, check out my one-day Olso itinerary!
If you end up spending starting or ending your Norway in a Nutshell trip in Bergen, check out my two-day Bergen itinerary!