Folgefonna National Park in Hardanger spans 5 municipalities with a total area of 545.2 km². Folgefonna is the collective term for three glaciers named Nordre, Midtre and Søndre (Northern, Central and Southern) Folgefonn. The southern part is the third largest and one of the most southern glaciers located in mainland Norway. At the highest it’s 1662 meters above sea level and 400 at the lowest. The glacier is in some parts as thick as 500 meters. This would be my first visit to Folgefonna as part of a round trip in the region and prior to this adventure, the only glaciers I’ve seen have all been in Iceland. Before the trip I spent hours studying maps and searching online for information. As I had no plans on actually walking the glacier itself, the search was for locations around the glacier where I could get up close enough to get a decent impression of it and fortunately there were some great spots found, but I’ll get to that a bit later.

Getting to Folgefonna from any major Norwegian city via car or bus is easiest from Bergen, Haugesund and Stavanger. The drive from all 3 cities should take less than 3 hours if one uses the village of Rosendal or the industrial town of Odda as destination. The route from Bergen includes a ferry across the lovely Hardangerfjord. From Haugesund one could either drive directly to Odda on the eastern side of the glacier or cross the fjord from Skånevik or Leirvik by ferry. From Stavanger one can choose the ferry to Skudeneshavn or the quicker Mortavika – Arsvågen crossing and then follow the same route options as from Haugesund. An alternative is to drive the scenic Ryfylke road, which is one of the acclaimed national tourist roads via Tau, Røldal and then to Odda, but will take more time. Taking the trip from Oslo to Odda or Rosendal will take roughly 5 hours. All stretches regardless of city, will encounter toll roads and ferry crossings. Apart from the two free sub-sea tunnels to Rennesøy north of Stavanger, you can expect prices ranging from 20 to 100 kroner on toll roads and 100-200 on ferry crossings. Once again, I was accompanied by my best travel buddy and for this trip, he had converted his Caravelle into a camper. We used the weekend for final preparations and planning, though the plan was to set off on a Sunday, the weather was so dreadful we waited until Monday morning before catching the first ferry from Mekjavik to Skudeneshavn in bright sunshine. We were off to a very good start with a ferry full of commuters and arriving the picturesque village of Skudeneshavn on the island of Karmøy, even before the residents were awake. We then continued along the coast of Karmøy, stopping at different spots to add to my Rogaland beach project and ended up in Husnes before calling it a night. The next morning we woke up to pouring rain and didn’t know what to do, since all of our plans were more or less dependent on anything but rain.

Folgefonna South – Insta Mosevatnet & Botnane

That morning we drove all the way to Sunndal and nearly giving up the whole thing, before we decided to turn and head back and towards one of the locations from my research, but with which I only found scarce information. Most likely this is due to that it’s not a tourist or hiking hot spot like other places around the glacier. Judging by aerial photos, this would be where the glacier would have retracted the least meanwhile being accessible on foot. With a glacier lake below one of them and a river below the other, I figured this would be the ideal place(s) for my landscape photography and I was right, had it not been for the pouring rain. This location is situated at the southern tip of the southern glacier and due to the lack of info, I was not able to determine their proper names, but I believe the glacier arm next to the Insta Mosevatnet/Møsevatnet lake goes by the name Svelgabreen and the second arm located at Insta Botnane or just Botnane, is called Botnabreen. To get here, you will have to drive onto road 48 by Dimmelsvik village in the Hardangerfjord and head towards Orradalen. Before Orradalen you should take the mountain road (to the left) marked by signs to a ski resort, SKL Blåfalli IV (hydro-power) and Blådalen (if I remember right). You will get to the crossing after having climbed the valley and passed 3 buildings by a small lake. The road then continues onwards and upwards. The road itself is an adventure as you’ll drive passed and even on top of numerous hydro-power dams with that green glacier colored water and on thrilling steep, narrow and winding roads. The marketing slogan; Norway – Powered by nature, is clearly visible in all directions. After passing 2 narrow 1-car tunnels, you can park at the end of the main mountain road, right next to the SKL building/cave. From here you can start a 3 hour hike to Botnabreen (look for the signpost). The first climb is steep, but once you get passed this, you’ll be walking on relatively easy ground, following the glacier river until you reach the mouth of Botnabreen. Due to the rain and wind, we decided not to do the hike as planned, but instead drove the final super steep (25 degree) stretch to the top of the dam above and parked right next to it. From here you’ll be able to spot Svelgabreen at the distance, but it is relatively easy to get a better view with a short hike along the mountainside.

Folgefonna West – Bondhusbreen & Fonnabu

Because of the weather and the risk of ruining the equipment, we headed down from the glacier and towards Rosendal, where we took a quick shower and a look at Barony Rosendal, before continuing to Sunndal for the night. The plans for the next morning was made, but a good nights sleep proved worthless. The next morning was just as bad as the day before and instead of doing the hike, we drove back to Rosendal to buy waterproof pants, food and supplies. The rain only settled into drizzle in the afternoon and the best we could do was a hike to Bondhusvatnet lake at the bottom of the steep Bondhusbrea glacier arm. This hike is short and very well prepared. The path from the parking lot follows the powerful Bondhuselva river on a restored tractor road trough a narrow valley with towering mountains on both sides. Along the road we met cows and a small Fjording family blocking the path. Fjording is a Norwegian fjord horse characterized by its strength, pale color (dun) and short height. This is also the start of 3 possibile hikes, the shortest one which we were on, leads to the lake and the second path is an extension around the lake leading all the way up to the glacier. The third is known as Keiserstien or The Emperors Path, named after Emperor Wilhelm II who spent his summer holidays in this region. A toilet and information sign is placed where the path splits in two. The Emperors Path is a 5 hour hike to the top of the mountain and ends at Fonnabu cabins which is said to be one of the most scenic DNT cabin locations in the country. The other takes 5 minutes and leads you  straight to the lake with the glacier arm as a backdrop. This is a perfect rest area with tables and benches cut in stone. Because it started raining again, we hid under a huge rock and started cooking dinner. Any chance of shooting in these conditions proved to be a waste of time, but i did my best using my raincoat as a tent to avoid any water from hitting the lens. The results were not what I came for, but if I ever start shooting “fine art”, some of the resulting images would fit right in there. As for the hike itself, I would recommend anyone who passes by to do the detour from Sunndal into the valley and walk up to the lake. The condition of the path is excellent and if the weather is good the scenery will be too. It’s the easiest hike I have done to date and is suitable for families with children as well as seniors. We decided to spend the night here hoping for better weather the next morning, but it wasn’t really a surprise to wake up to yet another drizzly morning. I was very skeptical about doing the Fonnabu hike we came here to do, in this weather. With the risk of getting wet and cold as well as running into snow and slippery conditions in what appears as a steep straight up climb for 5 hours. A sneaking cold didn’t help much to motivate us, but when we actually read the sign description about the emperors path again and noticing it was tagged black, it didn’t take long until we started packing our stuff and started driving. Black is the hardest hike in a scale of 4 degrees, where green and blue are light and moderate, red being demanding and black labeled “for experts”. Either way, the adventure was over.

Folgefonna East – Buerbreen & Odda

On our way back we decided to drive via Odda and the only quick way to get there is to drive the Folgefonna tunnel which is over 11km long straight through the glacier. A distance that until the opening in 2001, took 4 hours now only takes 10 minutes. I can’t remember the exact price for passing, but I believe it was between 100 and 200 kroner and the autopass (RFID unites) wont do any good as the toll charge is collected manually during daytime. Odda is an industrial town with about 7000 residents and has grown up around smelters, which by itself doesn’t sound very interesting. But Odda and the surrounding area has a lot to offer. It’s locatation at the bottom of Sørfjorden, a long and narrow branch of the great Hardangerfjord is like much of western Norway, photographically interesting by itself. On its sides it has two national parks (Folgefonna on one side and Hardangervidda on the other). Behind it lies Oddadalen, a valley full of powerful waterfalls such as Låtefoss, a “must stop” if you’re driving by car trough the valley. The most accessible part of Folgefonna glacier from Odda is nearby Buerdalen valley, a place that was on the list, but got ditched because of the weather. Opposite, a short drive via Tyssedal to Ringdalsvatnet lake is the startingpoint for hikes to the well known Trolltunga, a spectacular cliff shaped as a tongue. It also opens up to hikes in the Hardangervidda, the largest mountain plateau in Europe and offers thrill-seekers to mountain climbing with the Tysso Via Ferrata project, and this is just scratching the surface. With Odda now on the UNESCO world heritage list, more people will be aware of the town and what it has to offer. Leaving Odda and entering back into Rogaland county, the sun started (ironically?) shining again, but we’d had enough for now. Knowing how unpredictable the weather in western Norway is, the best is just to work with what you got and even though the trip didn’t result in the types of images I was hoping to achieve, I now have a better idea for my next visit, which for more ideal conditions I’ll try to get done next spring/early summer. The trip itself was an experience worth sharing and I am hoping this report will be useful to other photographers.

Useful links: Visit Sunnhordland, DNT Bergen Turlaug (norwegian), Visit Odda, Folgefonna National Park Brochure (PDF in English).

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is free and runs on mac, windows, linux and was written using Adobe AIR. To run The Photographer’s Ephemeris, you will need to install Adobe AIR (free) first. The software will also require an Internet connection to run the maps and calculations.

The screen shot above shows the terrain and location marked with the red pin. The bold lines mark sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moon set. The thin line shows the suns direction at a given time and the thin grey line can be moved around to show the degree (elevation) nearby mountains will be at from your position of the map. Put simple; what it does, is that it will tell you if a nearby mountain will be blocking the sun or not.  So, by moving the slider(s) you can quickly calculate the suns direction, vantage point and elevation of the nearby mountains, showing the ideal time for the waterfall shot. Whether or not this will work, will be put to the test next time im in the area. You can navigate by either using a traditional flat map, satellite images or terrain. I found that they all came in handy trying to figure out where the waterfall was, but a small drawback (atleast for me) is that these maps all lack a bit of detail in my area. This can however be compensated by using other maps to locate the exact position. Other features adding to the greatness of this software is the ability to save your locations, view by date (very nifty) as well as adding notes to saved locations.

You can download The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Adobe AIR here or if you’re not convinced, watch the tutorials below:

The location articles are part trip reports and notebooks with my experiences as a traveling photographer. In these articles I share my travel experiences, ideas and challenges with notes on what can be done better and hopefully be of use to other travelers and photographers.

There were 3 of us traveling to Iceland, a friend, my girlfriend and me. A tip from my friend who had been to Iceland earlier, was renting a 4×4 drive to get around easier. We studied the web and asked around for cheap “rent-a-wreck” like cars and in the end we discovered SadCars.is, which has normal 2 wheel drives and 4×4 at half the price of your normal rental company. Their cars are used (10 years) and we ended up with a Suzuki Grand Vitara which served us well during the trip.

The Blue Lagoon

While waiting for my friend traveling with Iceland Express (and before giving up the wait), I stayed half a day in the Blue Lagoon which is just as lovely as it looks. In fact it was better than I expected. I only wish I had some sort of waterproof or underwater housing for my camera so I could do some serious photographing. Ideally for those awesome shots, one can visit when air is cool in order to get pictures of  the water evaporating. I mainly captured wide angle pictures of the area, but if I was to do it again, I’d make sure I “zoom in” closer and compose my shots better with the main ingredients; the black lava rock formations, the blue water and a model.  Another tip is to pick up tourist brochures and look for the “two for one” advertisement, which will make your visit a bit less expensive unless you are on your own.

The Golden Circle

The following day we started with the Golden Circle tour, starting with Thingvellir. Thingvellir is a national park and where the old parliament is situated as well as being where the continental plates between Eurasia and America are most visible. With the weather shifting from sun to rain every 10th minute and the landscape being unknown to us, we decided not to spend too much time here. I recon if any world class photos are to be taken here or around Þingvallavatn (lake), you’d need to scout the area for good spots, have a lot of time as well as having a bit of luck with the weather.

Geysir is if i remember right, less than one hour from Thingvellir and holding only one rapidly erupting geyser, called Strokkur. Strokkur however, erupts every 5 to 10 minutes and not with the same force every time, so a bit of patience is needed when you’re waiting for the “big one”. The weather can change in just minutes from rain to sun and I recommend either waiting for better conditions or coming here when the weather is clear and the sun is right. The geyser when it is overcast, does not give you the contrast needed to show how spectacular these things are.

Gullfoss is another tricky spot due to the sheer size of the waterfall. I had a hard time finding a decent spot and ended lining up at “the photographer parking lot” with everyone else. There are a few viewpoints with a good overview of the waterfall (near the restaurant) worth trying out by following the path on the same plateau as the main road and restaurant. I walked here without the camera, but decided to do my shooting below and was too lazy and wet to get back up again.

Landmannalaugar

Once you leave the main roads, you’re met with alien like lava landscapes building up to mountains of different colors and shapes. This is where the 4×4 comes in handy. The later during the season you get here, the worse the roads get. As we were here in July, the roads were extremely bumpy and uncomfortable, but this somehow added to the excitement. Another must is to fill the tank up at the nearest station so that you can get back to civilization again. On road 26 which we followed from Flúðir, the last gas station was at a motel 40km before reaching Landmannalaugar.

The camp site is located at the end of the road and is great for campers bringing their own tents and 4×4 campers, but it is not very comfortable for those without. The hut has a kitchen and super sized bunk beds, with showers and toilets in a different building right next to the hut. Our room had about 32 guests sleeping and snoring in Dolby surround. I’m usually not that picky, but I would not sleep here again unless I came back from a long hike and was totally exhausted. The big bonus besides spectacular scenery, is the geothermal pool which would be worth the trip on its own. The camp is mostly used by hikers that we could see heading into the wilderness of Fjallabak nature reserve the next morning and is highly recommended to explore with a camera.

The following morning we headed south along F208 with Svinafell (one of many outlet glaciers of Vatnajökull) as end destination. The road was again, very bumpy and seemed to go on forever, especially because of the numerous rivers we had to cross. The landscape here, was again very alien with black mountains covered in neon green moss and river deltas. When reaching the coast, we left our luggage behind at a hired cabin in Ferðaþjónustan Svinafell camping and headed to Jökulsárlón.

Swimming in Jökulsárlón

The glacier lake right below the southernmost point of Vatnajökul is one of Iceland’s main tourist attractions and for a good reason. It is easily accessible from the main road and the lake is huge and full of floating icebergs and the occasional seal swimming in between them. My travel companions were overheated from all the driving and decided to go for a swim in the icy cold water, resulting in some memorable shots. The place is very impressive and have multiple viewpoints with fail proof chances for great photography. Personally I’d like to explore this area more and from different spots at different hours, including walking closer to the glacier backdrops and taking pictures of icebergs stranded on the black beach opposite the main road.  I should also mention that boat trips with amphibians are organized.

Skaftafell

Svartifoss in Skaftafell National Park is another attraction I wanted to photograph. It’s not the most powerful or beautiful, but is unique because of the dark hexagonal lava columns that surrounds it. We drove the car up past the camping site and followed directions to Bölti guesthouse. The parking is located only 10 minute walk from the waterfall and saved us both time and energy since we were not planning to explore the area any further. The waterfall has many different viewpoints worth exploring. The surrounding Skaftafell area appeared alpine with glacier covered mountains and would make an interesting trek or hike by itself. A short drive from the main road to either the Svinafellsjökull or Skaftafellsjökull glaciers could be well worth the detour as they’re steep, massive and easily accessible if you want to get up close. Don’t count on the glaciers around Eyafjalla, unless you want to shoot glaciers covered by ash.

Vík í Mýrdal

Pictures from the black beach in Vík and off shore basalt sea stacks called Reynisdrangar situated right below the Reynisfjall mountain have always fascinated me, but it proved more difficult than expected. As one of the main goals of my trip, this was where I was most disappointed in the resulting images. The sea stacks were hard to reach due to the tide, only reachable at the time by climbing huge rocks situated by the shore of the cliff and would require more time scouting and understanding of the area or alternatively a tele lens from a safe location free of wind. This is also a great scene to shoot with a long exposure and at either sunrise or sunset. A walk to the top of Reynisfjall takes about one hour and if equipped with a tele, could give some interesting shots of the sea stacks and the surrounding area. On the other side of Reynisfjall the sea stacks are more accessible and this was where I got my best shots, tho I’m not really happy with any of them. The road stops by the shore just meters away and from this location one can also see Dyrhólaey which I never got around to explore. Ideally I would like to spend one or more days trying to capture the beauty of the area. One can study the area closer by using ja.is aerial map.

From here on we headed back to Reykjavik only stopping for a short photo session and swim in the beautiful Seljalandsfoss.  A stop at Skógafoss was planned, but was not visible due to the dusty conditions around Eyjafjallajökull.

I booked a flight with Icelandair half a year in advance at a very reasonable price and arrived on time. That was however not the case with my friend who was supposed to land 30 minutes after me. His Iceland Express flight does a roller coaster ride and picks up and leaves off people along a route from London to Oslo and Keflavik. The flight was full in London, so the Oslo pickup was canceled and he had to wait over half a day for the next pickup, which this time did a landing in London, before heading to Iceland. He eventually arrived the next morning around 3 pm totally exhausted. This isn’t the only story with this airline, other people we spoke to had experienced major delays and very bad service, so be advised.

We were extremely lucky with the weather that cleared up completely on the third day of our trip and it got quite hot, without becoming sticky. However it did get quite chilly at night, so besides the obvious waterproof clothing, it’s recommended to bring or buy warm clothing and be prepared for any kind of weather. The rumors of sulfur smell was only experienced at Keflavik and later when passing Eyafjallajökull. Instead, I found it fresh and typical Nordic. Another thing that I found very pleasing was the lack of annoying insects. There are no mosquitoes in Iceland and no other insects that will bite or sting you, making the trip even more pleasing.  Photography wise, some sights and locations will require scouting or second visits for better conditions, viewpoints and angles, but also for further exploration. Iceland is great for landscape photographers with its unique nature and a week was just not enough. Next time and as a note to myself I will:  Spend more time (A month would be ideal). Dedicate more time shooting each location. Travel all around the ring road and explore the inland areas as well as Vestmannaeyjar and west Iceland. Bring more lenses, extra batteries and have some sort of mobile home or tent.