A road trip to Norway’s best view

The road to Kjeåsen, a mountain farm deep in western Norway’s fjord country, looks like a route to nowhere.

Hugging the shoreline of Simadalfjord, a tiny arm of Hardangerfjord, the road wanders from the village of Eidfjord past wooden waterside cabins and oxblood-red farm buildings. It rarely sees any traffic, which is just as well because the margin for error is measured in inches: one lapse in concentration and you’ll be in the water.

Up ahead, the outlook for a road trip is not promising. Sheer rock walls, so steep that they keep the valley floor in shadow for months every year, close the Simadalen valley off from the rest of the world on three sides. Where the fjord ends, the road passes through forests of pine and spruce, crosses a rushing stream fed by waterfalls and then arrives at a fork. Turn right and the road soon peters out in the forest, its onward path blocked by rock walls hundreds of metres high. Turn left in the direction of Kjeåsen and the journey seems equally unpromising for want of any obvious way forward.