Stegastein

Stegastein is a single gesture of architecture: a timber-clad walkway that leaves the mountainside, runs about 30 metres straight out over the treetops and then simply stops, some 650 metres above the Aurlandsfjord. At its tip the wooden deck curves down and is closed by a sheet of glass instead of a railing, so the platform seems to end in mid-air. Below lie the village of Aurlandsvangen and the long, dark arm of the fjord, walled by mountains that plunge almost vertically into the water.

The viewpoint was designed by the architects Todd Saunders and Tommie Wilhelmsen and completed in 2006 as part of Norway's National Tourist Routes, a programme run by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration that commissions contemporary architects to build rest stops and lookouts along the country's most scenic roads. The structure is a steel frame clad in pine, standing about 13 metres high on the lip of a precipice. A small service building was set slightly over the edge of the cliff so that it does not compete with the view, and the whole installation is accessible by wheelchair.

It sits on Aurlandsfjellet, the mountain road between Aurland on the Aurlandsfjord and Lærdal on the Sognefjord, known locally as the Snow Road because the high section above Stegastein runs through a landscape of rock and lingering snow and closes in winter. The stretch up from Aurland is steep and narrow, with seven hairpins and room for only one vehicle in places, which makes arriving at the platform all the more dramatic.

The Aurlandsfjord is a branch of the Sognefjord, Norway's longest, and from the platform you look along it toward the steep-sided valleys that give this part of western Norway its reputation. What makes Stegastein remarkable is not only the height but the restraint: a plank of wood, a pane of glass, and nothing between you and the fjord.

Getting there

Stegastein is 8 km by road above Aurland and about 18 km from Flåm, on the Aurlandsfjellet National Tourist Route; the road up to the viewpoint is normally open year round, with a small car park at the top. Buses run up from Flåm station and from Aurland. The nearest large airport is Bergen (BGO); the smaller regional airports of western Norway, such as Ørsta-Volda (HOV), are farther away by road than the map suggests.