When people picture Norway, their imagination usually heads north.
Fjords. Mountains. Northern Lights. Reindeer. Perhaps a Norwegian standing on top of something alarmingly high looking as though this is a perfectly normal place to eat a sandwich.
But Norway also has a south.
And after travelling through Kristiansand, Lindesnes and Mandal, we came home with one fairly obvious question:
Why aren’t more international travellers coming here?
Southern Norway has white wooden towns, islands, beaches, historic estates, excellent food, art, festivals, boat trips through tiny skerries and even a restaurant five meters beneath the North Sea.
Quite a lot, in other words.
And unlike some Norwegian itineraries, you don’t have to spend half your holiday looking at the inside of a coach to see it.
We already knew that Norway has considerably more to offer than its famous fjords and Arctic landscapes. What surprised us was just how much Southern Norway manages to squeeze into a relatively small corner of the country.
First stop: countryside, history and salmon
Shortly after arriving at Kristiansand Airport, we reached Boen Gård.
And within a few minutes, the airport felt very far away.
Historic buildings. Huge trees. Lawns. The Tovdal River.
And, during our visit, enough shades of green to suggest that Southern Norway had bought the colour in bulk.
Boen Gård has a long connection with salmon fishing, and its stretch of the Tovdal River still includes around 1.2 kilometers of double-sided fishing water. Anyone particularly serious about salmon can read more about fishing at Boen Gård.
We were also rather impressed by the food.
Actually, rather impressed is underselling it.
This is one of those places where the surroundings make you expect a good meal — and then the kitchen manages to make you temporarily forget about the surroundings altogether.
For an incentive program or private group, we immediately saw the possibilities.
Some guests can fish.
Some can simply enjoy the estate.
Everybody can eat extremely well.
And those who didn’t catch a salmon can quietly stop talking about fishing over dessert.
Dinner downstairs. Very downstairs.
From Boen Gård we headed towards Lindesnes.
We were staying at Lindesnes Havhotell, conveniently close to our restaurant for the evening.
Less conveniently, the restaurant was at the bottom of the sea.
Under is one of those places that sounds slightly ridiculous until you actually see it.
“Where are we having dinner?”
“Underwater.”
“Of course we are.”
The building slopes down into the North Sea, and you gradually descend towards a dining room about five meters below the surface. At the end is an enormous panoramic window, so while dinner is being served, the sea is doing its own thing on the other side of the glass.
Occasionally something swims past.
Presumably checking the menu.
We’ve actually been fascinated by Under for a while. If you want the full story — from its dramatic Snøhetta-designed architecture to the idea of dining beneath the North Sea — we’ve taken a deeper dive into the story of Restaurant Under.
Under is also listed in the Michelin Guide, which describes its spectacular underwater dining room and seafood-focused cuisine.
But honestly, even before the first course arrives, this is already an experience.
For incentive travellers, special celebrations or anyone looking for one of those “you are not going to believe where we’re having dinner tonight” moments, it takes some beating.
Where Norway finally runs out
The following morning we continued to Lindesnes Lighthouse.
North Cape tends to get most of Norway’s geographical-extreme publicity.
It has cliffs.
Midnight sun.
And a globe that approximately everybody has photographed.
But Lindesnes is where mainland Norway actually ends in the south.
The lighthouse stands at Norway’s southernmost mainland point, and the first light here was lit in the 17th century, making Lindesnes Norway’s first lighthouse. You can dig further into the area through Visit Norway’s guide to Lindesnes and Mandal.
The location itself doesn’t need much assistance.
Sea.
Rocks.
Wind.
Sky.
Lighthouse.
Stand there for a few minutes and you will almost certainly find yourself staring thoughtfully towards the horizon.
Everybody does.
We are not entirely sure what everybody is thinking about.
Possibly lunch.
Mandal: Norway in summer mode
Next came Mandal.
And if you want to understand what Norwegians mean when they talk about summer in Southern Norway, this is a very good place to start.
Mandal is one of the region’s characteristic white towns, with traditional wooden houses, narrow streets, gardens, flowers and water seemingly appearing every time you turn a corner.
The white part, incidentally, refers to the houses.
Just to avoid any misunderstanding.
The town is compact enough to explore properly on foot, and the sea is never very far away. There is a wonderfully relaxed feel to the place.
We visited Mandal Hotel, right beside the water, and what appealed to us wasn’t just the hotel.
It was the combination.
Hotel.
Town.
Waterfront.
Beach.
Restaurants.
Everything close together.
That’s important when planning travel.
Not every minute needs a guide, a bus and somebody holding a clipboard.
Sometimes the itinerary should simply say:
Free afternoon.
Walk through the white wooden streets. Have a coffee. Find the waterfront. Head towards the beach. Sit in the sun.
Temporarily forget that somebody has created an itinerary for you.
Mandal is very good at that.
The area around Mandal and Lindesnes is also easy to explore further, with white wooden streets, coastal scenery and Sjøsanden’s long city beach among the highlights.
Never take the boring transfer
You can travel from Mandal towards Kristiansand by road.
Perfectly sensible.
We didn’t.
We took a boat.
Much better.
What could have been a straightforward transfer became one of the highlights of the trip.
Southern Norway’s coastline breaks apart into islands, skerries, tiny harbours and narrow passages. Houses appear on rocks that barely look large enough to support a garden chair, let alone an entire building.
You quickly understand why people here become slightly obsessed with getting onto the water as soon as summer arrives.
Our route took us through the waters around Ny-Hellesund and Olavsundet, with beautiful scenery, historic settlements and exactly the sort of local stories we like.
Including the legend that Saint Olav escaped his pursuers when the mountains opened to allow his ship through.
Can we verify this?
No.
Would the story necessarily be improved by aggressive fact-checking while sailing through the Southern Norwegian archipelago?
Also no.
Sometimes you should just enjoy the boat ride.
And from a travel-planning perspective, there is something important here too:
A transfer doesn’t have to feel like a transfer.
Turning ordinary logistics into part of the experience is exactly the kind of detail we look for when we design tailor-made Nordic programs, incentives and round trips.
Kristiansand is not quite what we expected
Eventually, the scattered islands began turning into a city.
And arriving in Kristiansand by water is a rather good introduction.
We came into Fiskebrygga, the old fish wharf, with colourful wooden buildings, boats, restaurants and terraces gathered around the harbour.
This was also roughly the point where Kristiansand began dismantling one of our preconceptions.
We had expected pleasant.
Calm.
Nice.
Perhaps the sort of city where everybody goes home at 17:30 to water the geraniums.
Not quite.
In summer, Kristiansand has considerably more going on.
Restaurants and terraces fill up. Boats move through the harbour. People gather along the waterfront. And there is that particular Scandinavian summer atmosphere where everyone behaves as though sitting indoors would be a criminal waste of daylight.
But it isn’t just restaurants and cold drinks by the harbour.
Kristiansand has become a genuinely interesting cultural destination.
There is Kilden Performing Arts Centre, a growing festival scene and, just along the waterfront, one of the most interesting new museums in the Nordics.
Somebody looked at a grain silo and thought: art museum
The following morning we visited Kunstsilo.
The clue is in the name.
It used to be a silo.
A grain silo.
Which doesn’t immediately sound like the obvious starting point for a major art attraction.
Fortunately, somebody had considerably more imagination than us.
The huge industrial building from 1935 has been transformed into an extraordinary art museum while retaining enough of its original architecture that you never forget what it once was.
And what is inside is equally interesting.
We explored the museum on a guided tour.
Something we recommend.
Not because you need to be an art expert.
Quite the opposite.
A good guide puts everything into context and occasionally prevents conversations like this:
Guide: “Notice how the artist challenges conventional ideas of form.”
Us: “Yes.”
Internally: Nice blue.
The architecture alone makes Kunstsilo worth seeing, but together with the collection, waterfront location and neighbouring Kilden, it gives Kristiansand a completely different dimension.
It feels like somewhere you actually want to spend time.
Not simply the airport you use before going somewhere else.
And finally… the animals
Before heading back towards Kristiansand Airport, we had one more stop.
Kristiansand Dyrepark.
Calling Dyreparken a zoo is technically correct.
It is also a bit like describing Tivoli as somewhere with a few rides.
Dyreparken combines animals with entertainment, themed areas, attractions and family experiences on a very large scale.
For families travelling through Southern Norway, the Kristiansand Zoo and Amusement Park is an obvious inclusion.
And even if you arrive feeling like a very sophisticated adult who spent the previous morning discussing Nordic modernist art…
…there is a reasonable chance all dignity disappears when you spot a tiger.
So, is Southern Norway worth visiting?
What surprised us most was how much the region manages to fit into a relatively small area.
A historic estate and a salmon river.
Dinner beneath the North Sea.
Norway’s oldest lighthouse.
White wooden towns.
Beaches.
An island archipelago.
A lively city.
Festivals and performing arts.
One of the world’s great collections of Nordic modernism.
And one of Norway’s biggest family attractions.
All without spending half the journey staring at the inside of a coach.
That matters.
Southern Norway feels relaxed without being sleepy.
Scenic without being remote.
Traditional without feeling stuck in the past.
And in summer, it is wonderfully, ridiculously green.
Perhaps Norway doesn’t always have to mean going north
There are places in the Nordic countries that almost sell themselves.
Everybody already knows the photographs.
Then there are the destinations we particularly enjoy discovering.
Places where you arrive with one idea and leave thinking:
Why aren’t more people coming here?
Southern Norway was one of those.
And that is precisely why travelling through the destinations ourselves matters to us at Best of Nordic.
A hotel website can tell us the location is perfect.
A restaurant can tell us dinner will be unforgettable.
A tourism organization can tell us the region is beautiful.
They generally do.
But being there helps us understand something much more important:
How does everything fit together?
Where should guests spend a little longer?
Which transfer should become an experience?
When should the schedule disappear for a couple of hours and simply let people enjoy the town?
Where is the unexpectedly good meal?
And where should you arrange dinner five meters below the North Sea?
We now know.
So if Norway is on your mind, perhaps don’t automatically point north.
Try south.
There’s rather a lot waiting for you down there.
And if you would like to turn Southern Norway — or anywhere else in the country — into a tailor-made program, you can explore more of Norway with Best of Nordic or simply get in touch.
We’ll take it from there.