The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Norway
12 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in Norway are Geirangerfjord, Trolltunga and Nærøyfjord. The list covers 12 natural wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Norway's landscape is the work of ice. During successive ice ages, glaciers ground deep U-shaped valleys into some of the oldest and hardest rock in Europe, and when the ice retreated the sea flooded in to create fjords that reach far inland between near-vertical walls. The same hard gneiss and granite produced sheer cliffs, isolated peaks and boulders left balanced where the ice dropped them, while the warm Atlantic current keeps the long coast largely free of sea ice even far north of the Arctic Circle.
Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord, both inscribed by UNESCO as the West Norwegian Fjords, show the classic form: Geiranger with waterfalls such as the Seven Sisters pouring down its sides, Nærøyfjord so narrow that the mountains seem to close over it. Further south, the Lysefjord holds two of the country's most famous viewpoints, the flat-topped Preikestolen high above the water and Kjeragbolten, a boulder wedged in a crevice over an immense drop. Trolltunga, a thin ledge of rock jutting out over a lake in Hardanger, completes the trio of celebrated cliffs.
The north brings other forms. The Troll Wall in Romsdalen is the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, and Hornelen rises straight from the sea as one of the highest sea cliffs on the continent. Trollfjord is a narrow arm of water between Lofoten and Vesterålen, Saltstraumen near Bodø is one of the strongest tidal currents in the world, Torghatten is a mountain pierced clean through by a hole, and Segla on Senja is a single steep fin of rock above the fjord.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Geirangerfjord | Fjord | ✓ |
| 2 | Trolltunga | Rock formation | |
| 3 | Nærøyfjord | Fjord | ✓ |
| 4 | Preikestolen | Cliff | |
| 5 | Lysefjord | Fjord | |
| 6 | Trollfjord | Fjord | |
| 7 | Troll Wall | Cliff | |
| 8 | Saltstraumen | Fjord | |
| 9 | Torghatten | Natural arch | |
| 10 | Kjeragbolten | Mountain | |
| 11 | Hornelen | Cliff | |
| 12 | Segla | Mountain |
01 Geirangerfjord
Norway62.094° N 7.081° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ArvidO from Pixabay Seen from the water, the fjord's signature is its waterfalls. The Seven Sisters pour down one side in separate strands, and directly opposite falls the Suitor, which local legend casts as trying in vain to woo them. A third fall, the Bridal Veil, spreads so thinly over a rock edge that backlit by the sun it looks like gauze.
Did you know? A rockslide in 1873 destroyed much of Skageflå's cultivated land.
02 Trolltunga
Norway60.133° N 6.754° E
Image by trondmyhre4 from Pixabay For most of its history this was a place for a few hundred determined walkers a year: fewer than 800 people made the trip before 2010. Social media changed that. By 2016 an estimated 80,000 people were hiking out to stand on the tongue, and it became one of the most photographed natural sites in Norway. There is deliberately no railing at the edge.
Did you know? Ringedalsvatnet below the rock is held back by a masonry dam built between 1910 and 1918, 521 metres long and 33 metres high.
03 Nærøyfjord
Norway60.944° N 6.931° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by jogi031 from Pixabay The landscape is a textbook of glaciation. Ice sheets during the Quaternary cut a deep, narrow trough into ancient crystalline bedrock, and when they melted the sea flooded in. Waterfalls pour from hanging valleys hundreds of metres up, especially after snowmelt, and bare rock faces show the polish of the ice.
Did you know? The small wooden Bakka Church on the fjord shore was built in 1859.
04 Preikestolen
Norway · 29.2 km from Stavanger58.987° N 6.187° E
Svein Magne Tunli · CC BY-SA 4.0 The old local name was Hyvlatonnå, "the plane's tooth". The name Prekestolen, "the pulpit", was coined around 1900 by the Stavanger Trekking Association, which wanted to promote the site to walkers; the spelling with an "i" was adopted later to match the local written standard. A century on, it has become one of the most visited natural sights in Norway, with around 300,000 visitors in 2024.
Did you know? In 2020 the four-kilometre route to the rock was certified as one of Norway's National Tourist Trails; one section crosses a bog on old railway sleepers.
05 Lysefjord
Norway · 39.3 km from Stavanger59.010° N 6.359° E
Image by oohajo from Pixabay Two famous viewpoints hang over it. Preikestolen, the Pulpit Rock, is a flat-topped cliff standing about 604 metres above the water; it can be seen from a boat but is far more dramatic from above, after a hike. Near the head of the fjord rises Kjerag, about 1,110 metres, with even greater drops and the Kjeragbolten, a boulder wedged in a crack high above the void. BASE jumping from the cliffs is legal here.
Did you know? The Lysefjord Bridge at the mouth of the fjord is a suspension bridge opened in 1997, with a main span of 446 metres.
06 Trollfjord
Norway · 22.4 km from Svolvær68.364° N 14.977° E
Image by Ronile from Pixabay The fjord sits on the boundary between Lofoten and Vesterålen — it lies on Austvågøya, usually counted as Lofoten, but belongs to Hadsel municipality, usually counted as Vesterålen — and both regions claim it. It also has a place in Norwegian history. In 1890 the Battle of Trollfjord broke out here between fishermen in traditional open boats and crews of the new steam-driven fishing ships.
Did you know? In 1969 the 113-metre British ferry TS Avalon squeezed in and turned around; her captain nicknamed the fjord the Mousehole.
07 Troll Wall
Norway62.482° N 7.729° E
Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The wall was first climbed in 1965, when a Norwegian team and a British team reached the top by separate routes a day apart; the British line, the Rimmon Route, became the favourite until the 1998 rockfalls.
Did you know? The Norwegian first-ascent team of 1965 were Ole Daniel Enersen, Leif Norman Patterson, Odd Eliassen and Jon Teigland.
08 Saltstraumen
Norway · 9.5 km from Bodø67.231° N 14.614° E
Image by 12019 from Pixabay The Norwegian pilot guides time the current by the high tide at Bodø: the strongest inflow comes about an hour and a quarter before high water, the strongest outflow some four and a half hours after it, reaching more than eight knots. Between the two, when the tide turns, the water briefly calms and the strait becomes navigable.
Did you know? Excavations here uncovered traces of farming some 500 years older than any previously known in northern Norway.
09 Torghatten
Norway65.398° N 12.090° E
Image by drhorstdonat1 from Pixabay The mountain is made of foliated Proterozoic granite. For a long time the hole was explained simply as the work of waves when the sea stood higher after the last ice age, but more recent research points to several processes acting over at least two glacial cycles: meltwater draining beneath the ice, the movement of the ice itself, and wave erosion.
Did you know? When the ice retreated about 12,000 years ago the sea stood roughly 100 metres higher, and an old beach ridge of rounded boulders survives on the mountain's north-eastern side.
10 Kjeragbolten
Norway59.034° N 6.593° E
Scoundrelgeo · CC BY-SA 4.0 For most of that time essentially nobody stood on it, since the surrounding cliffs were not seriously climbed until fairly recently: a team of four climbers made the first documented ascent of the Kjerag wall in 1985, working entirely from photographs because they abseiled in without ever seeing the route from below first.
Did you know? The name simply means the Kjerag bolt; Kjerag itself may derive from words for a young goat and shaggy hair, describing the rough cliff.
11 Hornelen
Norway61.842° N 5.247° E
Smtunli · CC BY-SA 3.0 The mountain stands at the eastern end of Bremangerlandet, an island in Bremanger Municipality in Vestland county. Hornelen is built of sandstone laid down in the Devonian period, around 400 million years ago, in a basin that geologists call the Hornelen Basin. The layered beds of this sandstone give the cliff its banded face, and the Devonian fields of western Norway are an important chapter in the geological history of the country.
Did you know? For centuries fishermen and sailors used the unmistakable cliff as a landmark for finding their way through the outer reaches of Nordfjord.
12 Segla
Norway · 33.9 km from Finnsnes69.507° N 17.595° E
Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Senja itself is the second largest island in mainland Norway, around 1,586 square kilometres, and its outer side is a coast of steep alpine peaks, narrow fjords and small fishing villages. Segla stands on one of the northern headlands, just west of the village of Fjordgård. From the summit the view takes in fjords, open sea and the jagged ridges of northern Senja; on the Mefjorden side the drop runs roughly 600 metres down to the water.
Did you know? Seen head-on from neighbouring Hesten, the narrow prow of Segla shows a vertical wall roughly 300 metres tall.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in Norway?
- On our list, Geirangerfjord ranks first, followed by Trolltunga and Nærøyfjord.
- How were Norway's fjords formed?
- Glaciers flowing toward the sea during the ice ages carved deep valleys, often well below today's sea level. When the ice melted, seawater filled these valleys, leaving long, narrow inlets with steep walls such as Geirangerfjord and Sognefjord.
- What is the difference between Preikestolen and Trolltunga?
- Preikestolen is a broad, flat-topped cliff high above the Lysefjord near Stavanger, while Trolltunga is a narrow tongue of rock jutting horizontally over Lake Ringedalsvatnet in Hardanger. Both were shaped by glacial ice exploiting cracks in the bedrock.
- What is Saltstraumen?
- Saltstraumen is a narrow strait near Bodø through which the tide forces a huge volume of water four times a day. The result is one of the strongest tidal currents in the world, with whirlpools forming on the surface.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in Norway?
- The list covers 12 natural wonders.