The Lustrafjord: Norway's oldest wood carving, and its oldest family-run hotel

A quiet arm of the Sognefjord, and a genuine piece of Viking-era craftsmanship
The Sognefjord is Norway's longest and deepest, and most visitors see only its wide main stem. The Lustrafjord, one of its narrower branches, rewards a longer stay: it is home to Urnes Stave Church, built around 1130 and the oldest of Norway's surviving stave churches, its north portal carved in a style — animals and vines interwoven in dense, serpentine patterns — that bridges Viking artistry and early Christian Europe. It is the only stave church on the UNESCO World Heritage List, reached by a short ferry across the fjord from the village of Solvorn, followed by a walk uphill through the trees.
Solvorn itself is where we base clients for this fjord, at the Walaker Hotel — in the same family's ownership since 1690, and generally reckoned to be Norway's oldest hotel still run by its founding family. Antique furniture and original paintings fill the public rooms, the garden runs down to the fjord, and a four-course dinner using produce from the surrounding valley is included each evening. It is the kind of hotel that rewards clients who want their surroundings to have real history rather than a designed version of it.
Explore: Walaker Hotel, Solvorn - family-owned since 1690, antique furnishings and fjord-view garden, four-course dinner included

The Hardangerfjord: orchards, silverwork and a slower kind of craft

Norway's fruit basket, and a living folk-art tradition
The Hardangerfjord is better known for its orchards than its craftsmanship, but the two are closely linked. The Hardanger valley has its own regional folk costume, the Hardangerbunad, embroidered and finished with filigree silverwork that is still made by hand by a small number of practising silversmiths, and its own distinct folk-music tradition built around the Hardanger fiddle, an instrument with sympathetic strings and elaborately inlaid decoration found nowhere else in Norway. The regional folk museum at Utne, a short drive around the fjord, is the place to see both properly explained rather than glimpsed in passing.
We base clients at Hotel Ullensvang in Lofthus, a historic resort hotel set directly on the fjord with views across the water to the snowfields above, and an outdoor pool that makes the most of them. In June, the orchard terraces around the hotel are in blossom or early fruit — one of the most beautiful sights in Norway, and best appreciated slowly, by bicycle along the fjord-side lanes rather than from a car.
Explore: Hotel Ullensvang, Lofthus - historic resort hotel on the Hardangerfjord, outdoor pool with fjord views, cycling among the orchards

The Hjørundfjord: where writers and composers used to disappear to

Norway's most unspoiled fjord, and a hotel with a genuinely literary guestbook
The Hjørundfjord, tucked beneath the Sunnmøre Alps south of Ålesund, has no cruise-ship pier and no coach-tour circuit, which is precisely why it has kept its character. Sheer peaks rise directly from water so still it often mirrors them exactly, and the fjord remains one of the few in Norway that still feels genuinely remote rather than curated for visitors.
At its head sits Hotel Union Øye, a boutique hotel of only twenty-seven rooms that has been welcoming an improbable roster of writers, composers, kings and queens since the 1890s — its bedrooms are named after former guests, among them Henrik Ibsen and Kaiser Wilhelm II, who returned nearly every summer. For a client with a genuine interest in Norway's cultural history, staying somewhere that figure actually stayed carries more weight than reading about it elsewhere. From the hotel, a guided fjord cruise by small boat, or a hike partway up Slogen, the peak that dominates the fjord's western shore, are both easily arranged.
Explore: Hotel Union Øye, Norangsfjorden -  boutique 27-room hotel since the 1890s, rooms named after former guests including Ibsen, in the heart of the Sunnmøre Alps

Fjærland and the Nordfjord: Norway's book town, and an architectural landmark on the glacier's edge

Secondhand bookshops in old barns, and a museum designed by a Pritzker laureate
Fjærland, on a quiet arm of the Nordfjord, styles itself Norway's book town — a scattering of former barns, boathouses and farm buildings along the single road through the village given over to secondhand and antiquarian bookshops, largely unstaffed and run on trust. It is an unlikely thing to find at the foot of a glacier, and exactly the sort of detail that rewards a client who likes a destination with more than one dimension.
The other dimension here is architectural: the Norwegian Glacier Museum just outside the village was designed by Sverre Fehn, the only Norwegian architect to have won the Pritzker Prize, and its concrete forms sit deliberately and dramatically against the ice of the Jostedalsbreen icecap behind it. We base clients at the Fjærland Fjordstove Hotell, a quiet hotel on the fjord itself, from where a guided walk onto the glacier's Bøyabreen arm is a straightforward half-day excursion.
Explore: Fjærland Fjordstove Hotell, Fjærland - boutique hotel on the Nordfjord, in the heart of Norway's book town, glacier walking on Jostedalsbreen nearby

The Storfjord and Ålesund's Art Nouveau townscape

A fjord beneath the Sunnmøre Alps, and a town rebuilt entirely in one architectural style
Ålesund is one of Europe's more unlikely architectural set-pieces: after a fire destroyed almost the entire town in 1904, it was rebuilt within a few years, largely by young Norwegian architects trained in Germany, in a consistent Art Nouveau style — turrets, ornamental ironwork and decorative facades along the waterfront that have no real equivalent elsewhere in Scandinavia. A morning spent simply walking the streets, taking in the detail on buildings that were once fish warehouses and merchants' houses, is one of the more underrated city experiences we offer in Norway.
For the fjord itself, the Storfjord — the wide sound running inland from Ålesund toward the Sunnmøre Alps — is best appreciated from Storfjord Hotel, a lodge-style hotel on a hillside forty minutes from the town with panoramic views over the water and the mountains beyond. For clients who want to stay within Ålesund and make the Art Nouveau architecture the main event, Hotel Brosundet — family-owned, set across two historic waterside buildings on the town's canal — is the better base.
Explore: Storfjord Hotel, Skodje - lodge-style hotel with panoramic fjord and mountain views, 40 minutes from Ålesund
Explore: Hotel Brosundet, Ålesund - family-owned design hotel in two historic buildings on Ålesund's Art Nouveau waterfront

A few practical questions

Can we visit more than one of these fjords in a single trip?
Yes, and most of our Norway itineraries combine two or three. The Sunnmøre fjords — Hjørundfjord and the Storfjord — sit naturally together around Ålesund, while the Lustrafjord and the Nordfjord can be joined on a single fly-drive around the Sognefjord region. Combining fjords from the far north, such as the Lyngenfjord, with these western fjords in a single trip is possible but works better as two distinct journeys given the distances involved.

Do we need to hire a car to see these fjords properly?
A hire car gives the most freedom, particularly around the Lustrafjord, Hardangerfjord and Sunnmøre fjords, where the connecting roads and the small ferries that cross many of them are part of the experience rather than an inconvenience. For Geiranger and the Nordfjord, a mix of car and boat works well; we put the connections together so a client is never navigating unfamiliar ferry timetables alone.

Is June or July the better month for this kind of itinerary?
June tends to suit this particular itinerary best: the Hardangerfjord's orchards are in blossom, the light is at its clearest, and several of the smaller hotels and museums mentioned above are quieter than in the July peak. July brings warmer temperatures and slightly livelier villages, which some clients prefer, particularly for the Art Nouveau streets of Ålesund.

How much of this is suitable for a client who doesn't want strenuous activity?
Almost all of it. Only the Slogen hike from Hotel Union Øye and the glacier walk near Fjærland involve any real exertion, and both have gentler alternatives — a fjord cruise instead of the hike, a viewpoint walk instead of the glacier itself. The stave church, the folk museum, the book town and the Art Nouveau streets of Ålesund require nothing more than a comfortable pace.

Planning a fjord holiday with Expressions Holidays
The five fjords above are a starting point, not a fixed itinerary — we regularly combine two or three of them with a stay in Bergen or Ålesund, add extra nights at whichever hotel most appeals, or extend south to the Hardangerfjord's orchards or north to the fjords of Northern Norway for a client who wants both landscapes in one trip.
To begin planning, call us on 01392 441245 Monday to Friday 9am to 5.30pm, Saturday 10am to 2pm, or email info@expressionsholidays.co.uk. If you would prefer to browse first, the links below go directly to the most relevant holiday pages.