Trollstigen

Trollstigen, the "Troll's Ladder", is the stretch of County Road 63 that climbs out of the Isterdalen valley above Åndalsnes in western Norway. Isterdalen is a classic glacial U-valley — flat-floored, walled by sheer rock and threaded with waterfalls — and the road solves its headwall with eleven tight hairpin bends stacked one above another on a gradient of about 10 per cent, rising to roughly 850 metres at the top of the pass. From above, the road looks like a grey ribbon folded back on itself again and again down the cliff.

The setting is as much the point as the engineering. Peaks well over 1,000 metres — among them Bispen, Kongen and Dronningen, the Bishop, the King and the Queen — crowd around the pass, and the Stigfossen waterfall drops down the mountainside right beside the bends, crossed by the road on a bridge. Early in the season the road runs between walls of old snow even when the valley below is green.

Before the road there was only a narrow packhorse trail, built in the years before the First World War. Work on a proper road took eight years, and King Haakon VII opened it on 31 July 1936. Each of the eleven bends is named after the work gang that built it — a small, human detail on a road that feels almost geological.

At the top, the plateau has a car park, a visitor centre and a series of steel and concrete viewing balconies by Reiulf Ramstad Architects, cantilevered out over the edge so that you can look straight down the valley and the hairpins. Trollstigen became one of Norway's National Tourist Routes in 2012, and continues south to Valldal and on towards Geiranger.

Getting there

The foot of the climb is about 20 km by road from Åndalsnes, the nearest town, which is the end station of the scenic Rauma Line railway from Dombås. Molde, about 41 km away in a straight line, is the nearest larger town; Molde Airport (MOL) is about 38 km away as the crow flies, but the road journey to the pass is longer, around the fjord. Most visitors drive the route themselves or join a summer bus or tour from Åndalsnes or the fjord towns.