GALDHØPPIGEN

NORWAY / 2469m

The highest mountain in Scandinavia has a café on top. But that’s ok – because it’s the highest mountain in Scandinavia, and that means something. Scandinavia is the north country – the land of clean air, thick boreal forest, skies as wide as the world and people who live in villages of wood that twinkle in the midnight sun.

The mountains cluster spellbindingly over fjords, or poke out of glacierblanketed wilderness, old and angular – and not as high or as hard as you’d expect.

An ascent of Galdhoppigen gives you a fine slice of this experience. Located in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park, an ascent of this mountain gives you several things – experience of mild altitude, some moderately high-end walking to a snow-capped summit in summer conditions, and the panorama you get when you climb to the highest point for hundreds of thousands of square miles. And approach that café with caution. If you think lowland Norway is expensive, wait until you see the prices at its highest point…