Spectacular rail journeys: Taking the scenic route

By Joseph Phelan

Some of Scandinavia’s most spectacular scenery lies far from motorways and flight paths. For travellers drawn to mountains, fjords, forests and lakes, there is no better way to explore than by rail.

Scandinavia’s railways reach places few other forms of transport can access: villages at the head of fjords, Arctic mining towns, and solitary platforms deep in the forested interior. Frequently ranked among the world’s greatest rail journeys, these iconic routes are triumphs of human ingenuity. They represent decades of daring engineering that forged steel tracks through unforgiving mountains, treacherous wetlands, and vast, frozen wilderness.

Scandinavia’s railways were built to connect a vast, varied landscape. Conquering its most inaccessible terrain required blasting tunnels through granite, spanning gorges with arched bridges, and driving lines over mountain plateaus that, for much of the year, are buried in snow.

View from the window, the Flåm Railway. Photo: Unsplash

Elsewhere, the work was less dramatic but no less gruelling: tracks had to cut through forests and valleys, stretching across long distances where the geography was gentler, but the sheer scale was arguably greater.

Much of this development took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when railway construction relied on large itinerant workforces. In remote mountain regions, temporary camps and barracks were often built from scratch to house workers for months at a time, forming short-lived settlements that moved with the progress of the track.

Åndalsnes. Photo: Unsplash

A masterpiece of engineering

Of all the lines this era produced, few are as remarkable as the Flåm Railway (Flåmsbana) in Norway. Started in 1923 and completed in 1940, it runs for just 20 kilometres from the fjordside village of Flåm to Myrdal in the high mountains. In that short distance, it climbs around 865 metres, following a route that ranks among the steepest standard-gauge railway lines in the world.

The construction was a triumph of manual labour and explosives: of the line’s 20 tunnels, 18 were dug without machinery. The most ingenious is undoubtedly the Vendetunnelen, which spirals in a figure of eight through the mountain to let the train gain height on the steepest stretch.

The line passes through steep valleys and tight mountain passes where waterfalls drop directly from the rock face. At Kjosfossen, it slows to a stop so that passengers can step out onto a platform beside the torrent as it crashes into the gorge below.

Though built as a practical connection between fjord and high mountain railway, it has become one of Norway’s most popular rail journeys, with the route’s dramatic terrain drawing close to one million visitors every year.

Further north, the Ofoten Line was created out of industrial necessity. Built at the turn of the twentieth century to carry iron ore from the mines of Kiruna in Swedish Lapland to the ice-free port of Narvik, it passes through some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in Scandinavia.

Construction, completed in 1902, relied on thousands of workers carving tunnels, bridges and track beds through the mountains to make the route possible. More than a century on, the line still performs its original task, but also doubles up as a route that rewards passengers with incredible views of fjords, Arctic mountains and, in winter, the Northern Lights.

Jönköping, Jonkoping County, Sweden. Photo: Pexels

Slow and steady

If Flåm and Ofoten are defined by dramatic engineering and extreme terrain, Sweden’s Inlandsbanan offers a longer, more winding journey through vast stretches of forest, lakes, wetlands and remote settlements.

Running the length of Sweden’s interior, the Inlandsbanan follows the country’s inland spine from Kristinehamn in the south to Gällivare in the north, and at 1,288 kilometres this is the longest rail route in the country.

When the final stretch opened in 1937, the inauguration ceremony was held not in Stockholm, but in Jokkmokk, a tiny town in the northern interior that is a vital hub for the Sámi people, the only indigenous people recognised in the European Union.

It was a deliberate move designed to shine a spotlight on the part of Sweden that the line existed to serve. King Gustaf V travelled north for the festivities and spoke of the railway as something he believed would play a major role in uniting the country. For the formerly isolated towns along the route, such as Vilhelmina, Arvidsjaur and Sorsele, it did just that, opening a connection to the rest of Sweden that had never previously existed.

Stockholm Central. Photo: Pexels

Creating connections

Norway’s Dovre Railway, fondly nicknamed ‘the trail of the trolls’, links the present-day capital Oslo with Trondheim, the country’s historic Viking seat of royal power, across 548 kilometres of track. Its meandering route passes farmland, lakes, rivers, deep forests, narrow valleys, and the high, treeless passes of the Dovre Mountains.

The Rauma Railway, also in Norway, packs comparable drama into a fraction of the distance. Beginning at the village of Dombås, it follows the valley gouged out by the River Rauma, offering magnificent views of the crags, peaks and plateaus that border the tracks.

Further down the line, just beyond the village of Verma, the train slides into the horseshoe-shaped Stavem Tunnel, which loops back on itself inside the mountain to shed height, before crossing the Kylling Bridge, the most photographed section of the route. Beyond this, it passes Trollveggen, or Troll Wall, which is the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, before arriving at Åndalsnes, on the shores of the beautiful Romsdalsfjord.

Dalarnas län bridge Sweden. Photo: Pexels

The Scandinavian way

Beyond the views, there is also a practical argument for taking the train. Rail is already among the lowest-carbon ways to travel, and in Scandinavia it is cleaner still: the networks are heavily electrified, and the electricity comes largely from hydropower and other renewables.

Consequently, traversing the region by train produces a small fraction of the emissions of the equivalent journey by air. In a part of the world where the environment is taken seriously (Sweden has even coined the term flygskam, or flight shame, for the guilt of boarding a plane), the ability to travel more sustainably has obvious appeal.

This mindful approach to travel extends beyond the environment and into the region’s cultural fabric. The Danish concept of hygge is often described as taking pleasure in life’s quieter moments – comfort, company and contentment away from the rush of everyday life. A long train journey through Scandinavia lends itself naturally to that mindset. Hours spent watching forests, mountains and lakes drift past the window are not time lost, but time reclaimed, whether spent in conversation, reading a book or simply observing the landscape unfold.

Perhaps that is why rail travel feels so well suited to this part of the world. Train journeys connect cities and communities, but they also afford travellers time: time to observe, reflect and appreciate what exists just beyond the carriage window.