Northern Norway by train - A first step towards more sustainable traveling
Little time? Jump to the conclusion
A comparison of train rides against flights and an appeal for travels by train
(& a short description of the journey and places themselves)
I met some friends from my Erasmus semesters in Trondheim for a reunion in Northern Norway during early spring - a timing when it’s both possible to enjoy some snow and see some Northern Lights if you’re lucky.
Any place in Northern Norway can be a great destination for travelling in spring, but for some of us it was also important not to take an unnecessary flight. Instead of feeling the responsibility to further accelerate global warming, we decided to take the train instead and go hiking close to the northernmost train station in Norway - Narvik. We did this with the good hopes of not only taking the better decision for the environment, but also enjoying the journey itself.
This blogpost is now the result of described journey, which I can already tell you we enjoyed a lot. Moreover, we are happy with our decision to take the train instead of the plane. The following paragraphs contain both a comparison of flights and trains with a focus on the CO₂e-emissions, but also costs and other (dis-)advantages, as well as a description of the journey and places with some travel tips.
Contents
Comparison of the train rides vs flights
Half of our group did not want to take a plane for the reunion - the people living in Germany and thus a bit closer to Norway than those living in France and Austria. For myself it was very clear that I do not want to take a plane again without a good purpose or in other words “where it may easily be avoided”. This intention is described in my first blogpost Purposeful Travel.
It was important for us as a group to spend time together, experience the countries on the way and we also didn't mind taking more time for traveling to the destination. With these objectives, a train ride together - or actually several train rides - fit us very well. Honestly, we were also interested to experience directly whether travelling by train can be a good alternative even for a longer distance apart from the positive effects for the environment.
We actually didn’t do any calculation or sustainability research before booking our train tickets and based our decision on the common knowledge that flights usually have much higher CO₂-equivalent emissions (CO₂e) than trains. Retrospectively, I could then quite exactly calculate this difference as shown below. The train rides that I took from Munich to the North of Norway went via Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm all the way to Narvik. Hamburg was a good starting point because the train to Copenhagen starts from here and because we could meet at a friend’s place to start our trip together.
For the way back, we had the same plan. However, we very spontaneously decided to switch for a short-term car rental between Stockholm and Malmö due to a significant delay on our train from Narvik to Stockholm and because we planned to meet a friend in Copenhagen still on the same day in the evening. Although it may sound like a failure when testing long-distance train rides, I rather see it as a base for learning for future journeys - in this case planning the stopovers as well-timed buffers. As we shared a vehicle with economic fuel usage with 4 persons, the additional CO₂ emissions of ~24kg / person for this 700km car ride is still very low compared to the emissions when flying. It is also not that much higher than the Danish trains as described below.
Before writing about the calculated CO₂e emissions and the possibility to compensate these, I believe it’s necessary to point out that reducing CO₂e emissions is more important in the urgent race against climate change than merely the compensation, e.g. of a flight.
Compensation may be a good start because eventually it should cancel out exactly the emitted CO₂e emissions and because it brings some awareness to the responsible people. However, it only reduces the already emitted CO₂e emissions at a later time and in a different place while the world’s overall CO₂e emissions are likely to continue increasing.
By directly reducing CO₂e emissions on the other hand there is a much better chance to overall decrease emissions and hopefully reduce the effects of climate change. Especially when it comes to a flight, the sole compensation does not eliminate the CO₂e immediately from the atmosphere as not executing the flight does.
The emissions, which could not be avoided, should in my opinion be compensated in addition. My friends and I compensated our remaining transportation emissions with the German Non-Profit-Organization atmosfair after reducing them significantly by taking the train instead of the plane.
Btw: I started to compensate my average yearly emissions with TeamClimate - a Start-Up from Austria with the great concept of compensating for one’s yearly average emissions with a subscription model. Apart from calculating and compensating my complete CO₂e emissions, I really like their ideas of a subscription model and a personal tracking because I hope that this can convince many more people of the importance of both reduction and compensation of CO₂e emissions together. Although reduction is more important in my opinion, reducing the effects of climate change requires everyone both to reduce first and to compensate in addition.
Compensating with TeamClimate is unfortunately not considered a donation unlike compensating with atmosfair where the state of Germany would consequently finance a part of the compensation. However, they have a much lower price for compensation than atmosfair, which based on info from them would be due to their small organization being more efficient at compensating than others.
After talking about the trip, in general, our intention and why we both reduced and compensated, I’m now coming to the most interesting part: The Comparison Calculation.
The return journeys that I compared from Munich to Narvik do not contain any special factors like the car we rented, but are solely:
A return-flight with 1 stopover in Oslo
Train rides via Hamburg, Copenhagen, Malmö and Stockholm with the trains and energy usage of the corresponding national railway companies
In the calculations for the train, I also included the assumptions that the ICE high-speed train in Germany is powered by the regular share of German electricity sources including fossil fuels, which leads to 32 g CO₂e / (km*person) (Tagesspiegel, a figure of the German “Environment Agency”, 2020). DB, the national railway company of Germany meanwhile states that the ICE is powered by with 100% renewable energies and thus only emits <1 g CO₂e / (km*person). Based on my assumption and Tagesspiegel, the usage of renewable energies for an ICE doesn’t lead to an overall higher renewable energy share in Germany’s electricity production, though, because either a different train or another consumer is then powered by non-renewable energies instead. Therefore, I prefer to calculate this comparison with the amount of CO₂e, which was actually emitted by powering the trainride for one person.
Even despite this very disadvantegous assumption, the CO₂e emissions from the train rides only add up to less than 10% (101kg, sum of several train calculations) of the emissions of the “most direct flight” with only 1 stopover in Oslo (1.111kg, calculated by atmosfair). You can clearly see the difference in the following bar-chart.
The main driver for saving CO₂e emissions are the Swedish trains, which are according to SJ is fueled 100% by renewable energies and thus only emit 0,0039 g CO₂e per passenger-kilometer and only 0,0024g CO₂e on the high-speed X-2000 trains respectively. As the electricity in Sweden is almost completely produced by renewable energies and nuclear energy, even the assumption like the one I used for the German trains would only lead to marginally higher CO₂e emissions.
The ratio could be reduced to <5% of the flight’s emissions when calculating the <1 g CO₂e / (km*person) as proclaimed by Deutsche Bahn for the ICE high-speed trains and even lower if all the Danish trains would run on electricity. In the donut-chart below the two red and the orange sections for the Germany and Danish trains would be significantly reduced. Only when all trains run on renewable energies, the swedish trains would be visible and not “disappear” next to the others due to the very low Swedish railway CO₂e emissions.
The Danish Train System DSB is luckily already on a track to curb CO₂ emissions to zero by 2023. They ordered 100 electric trains from Alstom in 2021, which are expected to be in operation by 2024. This spring we still did see many diesel trains in Copenhagen, though. Hence, I just took the data from the website Ecopassenger.
For the ones interested in checking my numbers and sources: The link to my basic calculation Excel can also be found in the sources section.
I can totally understand that not everyone appreciates the trains in Europe the way I do and that both knowing about and the desire to reduce carbon emissions and climate change do not necessarily lead to a decision in favor of taking a train instead of a plane.
To help you make up your own mind, I gathered a list of qualitative advantages and disadvantages of train rides compared to flights:
Advantages
Travelling by train can lead to automatically looking for closer vacation places and thus choosing shorter distances, which overall reduce CO₂-emissions, too
Trains are quite comfortable and one is free to move around (on the train)
It’s fairly easy to constructively use the travelling time because there are few interruptions and train rides are usually not that shaky
Possible to see more places on the way and have longer stopovers
Usually it’s possible to bring more luggage without extra costs, e.g. food, alcohol, sports equipment
The slower train travel can be an initialization to relax and enjoy instead of rushing
Disadvantages:
More time is required for travelling to the destination. If it’s just one destination, less holiday days can be spent at final destinations
Bad internet (for working etc.)
Limited space for a while (but more space than on a flight / bus)
Some countries / area can be much less accessible by train than by flights, cars or busses
Some touristic flights could be cheaper than the train. It always depends on the route, timing and sometimes special offers, though.
Generally, the costs for flying and taking the train from Munich to Narvik are similar considering all expenses and a fairly early booking (~4-5 months).
The train rides add up to approx. 600€ in total, when no special discounts apply, but including a cancellation option (DB Sparpreis) and seat reservations. We think that our specific journey would not be possible by European Interrail due to the sleep coach, but if it was, it would be much cheaper (an interrail ticket for 7 days only costs 335€ when 28 or older or just 251€ until 27).
The travel by plane can be cheaper when booked approx. half a year in advance. I found a basic flight price for 370€ for the most direct option with 1 stopover in Oslo (Lufthansa, Norwegian). The train to and from the airport in Munich and the bus to and from the airport in Narvik cost ~70€ in total. In addition to the flight price itself, one needs to add costs for 2 extra nights as 2 nights are spend on the night train. Calculating with ca. 40€ / night and compensating 1t more CO₂e emissions than when using a train, the flights end up being approx. 50€ cheaper.
For the ones interested in checking my numbers and sources: The link to the costs Spreadsheet can also be found in the sources section.
For my friends and me, the trains actually ended up being the cheaper option because we carried more food and beer to Stockholm and Norway than what we would have been able to bring on a plane. Doing the shopping in Germany, saved us a fair bit of money compared to the local prices in Sweden and Norway.
Long train rides can certainly be different from short flights - also with regard to the unexpected things that may happen. Hence, I gathered a list of learnings that I plan to continue or start doing on my next longer train travels:
Book the individual trains via one provider and in one booking as far as possible in order to be able to receive compensation when missing a connection due to a delay. For our journey that would only be DB e.g. for Copenhagen to Munich (Germany and directly connecting countries) and SJ for Sweden and Norway.
Have several stopovers as buffers in between, e.g. in our case 1 night in Stockholm on the way north and 1 on the way back south instead of 2 nights in a row.
Get flexible tickets if feasible and economically reasonable; e.g. at DB the second cheapest ticket option “Sparpeis” instead of “Super-Sparpreis” allows at least for an almost complete refund when cancelling. Flexible bookings are not possible with SJ yet, though
Or if the tickets are completely refundable: Book several choices for connections difficult to catch and where spots are limited and quickly sold out
Leverage European interrail tickets where it’s possibe as this may be the easiest and cheapest option of all, but beware the necessary seat bookings (I haven't tried interrail yet, but I’m very interested in doing so soon)
Bring food, games and music for long train rides
Bring friends or make new friends on the travel
Use the available time to reflect (journaling, blogging, photo editing, etc.)
Learn how to live with the uncertainty of delays: Everything is going to work-out somehow and the new solution may create new chances and at least a good story
Leverage overnight trains with beds, but also beware where there are no overnight cabins available despite the overnight journey
Know the rules about refunds for delays (in Europe 25% for >60min, 50% for >120min)
The main objective for our journey was to reunite with a group of friends from our Erasmus semesters in Trondheim by staying at cabins in Northern Norway. In addition to the intention to take the train instead of a plane, a few of us also wanted to take the opportunity to enjoy the capitals where we’re stopping anyways, too: Stockholm and Copenhagen.
In total it made up for a very nice Scandinavian roundtrip, of which I’m just describing a few nice aspects here. There’s surely much more to see, do and know about these places for people with more time to stay / learn.
In case theres’s someone interested in doing a very similar trip by train to Norway, I’m sharing here how we travelled in spring 2022 with the only difference that we would make a stopover in Stockholm both on the way up north and on the way down south. The total 16-day-trip would look like this with starting on a Saturday and ending on a Sunday:
Day 1 (Saturday): Travel to Hamburg for meeting as a group and spend some time enjoying the city with your friends
Day 2: Trains to Copenhagen (DSB, but booked via DB to stay with one provider) and directly to Stockholm (SJ - Swedish trains sell out quickly, so it’s better to book in advance); total ca. 11-13h travel time
Day 3: Enjoy Stockholm for 1 day after an overnight stay (we did 2 days straight in Stockholm, but an additional buffer on the way down south can be very helpful; spreading the time in Stockholm also gives better chances for good weather or meeting people who are not always in town)
Day 3-4: Nighttrain to Narvik (bookable via VY or better via SJ to stay with one provider); ca. 18-20h travel time
Day 5-11: Northern Norway is up for your discovery / enjoyment for a full week, e.g. by hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, staying at cabins, playing in the snow and relaxing in the sauna, looking for Northern lights,…
Day 12-13: Nighttrain back to Stockholm ca. 18-20h travel time
Day 13: Second day for enjoying Stockholm ended by an overnight stay (retrospectively, we believe it would have been very good to have this buffer after the long nighttrain from Narvik to Stockholm)
Day 14-15: Train from Stockholm to Copenhagen (ca. 5-6h travel time) and enjoy Copenhagen for 1,5 days with 2 overnight stays
Day 16 (Sunday): Copenhagen to Hamburg (ca. 5h) and back home for everyone
In total you end up with 7 full days in Northern Norway and 1,5 days for Copenhagen and Stockholm each. Based on my experience, I consider these good amounts of time to spend in each of the places considering the potential activities as described in the next sections.
The total train travel time adds up to ca. 57-64h = ca. 2,5 full days including 2 overnight trains, but excluding the travels from and to Hamburg (in my case another ca. 6-7h both from Munich to Hamburg and for the return-trip).
The Swedish capital is located on “islands” close to the Baltic Sea in the East of Sweden. In spring you may experience beautiful views over the water, which in our case was almost completely melted but with still some ice left from the winter months. We really enjoyed walking at the shores of the islands and through the center of the city.
When in Stockholm, I would definitely recommend to visit the old town Gamla Stan and one ore more of the several great museums. Because I find it quite interesting, I actually went to the Vasa museum each of the 3 times when I was in Stockholm. The story of the warship that was armed too heavily for too little weight at the bottom and thus didn’t make even manage to leave the city is just too stunning. Skansen is an outdoor museum, with several different parts, e.g. buildings from the 18th and 19th century Sweden, wildlife of Scandinavia on land and in the Baltic Sea. Better watch out for the opening days at museums, though. In our case the Nobel Prize Museum was not accessible, because it was not open on Mondays and Tuesdays while we were there.
In good weather it is also very nice to take a ferry of the public and enjoy the views from the water, e.g from Slussen in Gamla Stan to the amusement park Gröna Lund close to the Scandinavian, Vasa and Skansen outdoor museum. For people into architecture photography, some of the Stockholm subway stations can be worth the visit because they’re painted and decorated in different styles of art.
We enjoyed the sunset at Skinnarviksberget on the Södermalm island just south-west of the old town Gamla Stan.
Nordland is the county in Norway, where the polar circle is located. Despite the name it is actually not the northernmost county (“Fylke”) of Norway. Troms, Finnmark and the island group of Svalbard are located even further north. Due to its position on the polar circle, polar night and polar day can be experienced in the northern parts of Nordland, for example in Narvik and on the Lofoten islands.
As Norway in general, Nordland impresses with the mountains directly meeting the sea: There are both impressive fjords and islands. The Lofoten are probably the best known and most touristic place, but the other parts of Nordland do not need to hide either.
Even in the midst of winter without sunlight, it is actually not getting so cold due to the gulf stream. It usually only goes down to -10 /-15°C and usually snows a lot. The powder snow is also said to be one of the best for those who like ski-touring and the Lyngen Alps the place to be for the best tours.
Generally, Nordland and basically all of Norway is an amazing place for all kinds of outdoor activities depending on the season. While in winter it is possible to do all kinds of skiing or also hiking with snowshoes, summer is a paradise for hiking, climbing, cycling and even surfing north of the polar circle.
Unless the path you’re planning to follow is known to have little snow, I would recommend to bring skis or snowshoes for a safe and quick journey. I did hike in deep snow without snowshoes or skis a few times, but it usually ended up taking much more time than anticipated so that we also had to find alternative routes or overall terminate the trip. Therefore, I propose for myself that normal hiking in deep snow is only reasonable and safe for “short” tours.
One of the advantages of northern Norway compared to the rest of the country are the natural phenomena of Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and polar days. While the latter can only be experienced north of the polar circle, chances for visible Northern Lights increase significantly the further North one goes.
The best time to travel to see Northern lights in my opinion is March. It still gets completely dark at night so one has the chance to spot some Northern Lights (as long as there is sufficient solar activity and the sky is clear), and there is already enough sunlight to enjoy the day, as well. In the beginning of January, the sun cannot be seen from Narvik and by April there is no completely dark night anymore until October.
For anyone looking for Northern Lights, I can suggest the App “My Aurora Forecast”, which I had good experiences with. In my respective gallery pages are more photos of Norway and Sweden in general.
The Norwegian Trekking Association DNT operates a total of approx. 550 mountains cabins in Norway. As a member one receive discounts at all cabins and on served meals at the staffed lodges. The in my point of view most interesting cabins are the self-service and no-service cabins of which many require a DNT key to enter them. DNT Cabin Keys are only given to members for a deposit as described on the DNT website.
Most of these cabins and especially the self- and no-service ones are located in amazing locations to disconnect from the everyday hustle and one can decide how much “off-the-grid” is preferred. Cabins can be all next to a road, only a few km hike from the next street / train station or completely remote without mobile phone coverage. There are both cabins, which are almost similar to a normal vacation home, and others, which are very little equipped (still a bit more than the NTNUI Koiene from the University in Trondheim where I spent two Erasmus semesters from what I’ve seen so far though).
Depending on the type of cabin, prices also vary from economical to “normal” vacation home prices. The first cabin that we’ve been to was “Vokterboligen” where we stayed almost like in a “normal” vacation home with electricity, running water in a normal kitchen and a shower next to the sauna.
For our way to Vokterboligen, I actually have a nice fun fact to tell:
The train driver stopped for us directly next to the cabin (ca. 150m), which we thanked him in return for a German beer and a JOKOLADE chocolate bar (the German chocolate brand that wants to eradicate modern slavery and illegal child labour from cocoa production, which I currently give all of my professional commitment)
The second of three cabins, which we went to was “Skoddebergshytta”, which is located directly next to a road and a great base for another trip:
We wanted to go to Blåvatnhytta initially with the whole group. Due to the overall difficulty of the tour and not to forget the general avalanche risk of hiking in the snow in a mountainous area, in the end only 3 of us 8 friends started the tour while the others stayed at Stakkslettbua. Based on a fairly good weather forecast and relatively low avalanche risk, we started the hike early in the morning on snowshoes. Ascending the partly very steep areas partly through deep snow, partly on ice and most of the time against strong winds was certainly challenging and exhausting.
As it was neither a completely safe way up and we could foresee that the way down would also be challenging (with more snow or on the existing ice), we decided not to take the next even steeper part to Blåvatnhytta and stayed at a safety cabin on the way already up in the mountains instead - “Niingshytta”. We were very lucky to have beautiful weather and no wind once up at the cabin and also just a short 15min walk from there to a viewpoint over the fjord. We went there twice to enjoy the view during the afternoon and at sunset.
Can you spot the small, red Niingsyhatta in the valley?
Up in the mountains we were both lucky to have such good weather after hiking in strong winds and then even a clear sky and some Northern Lights at night.
Not only for us, it was important that Niingshytta is “safety-cabin” and thus always open and not bookable. Shortly after we had heated up the cabin, a solo hiker arrived, who had a tough time going up all alone and was badly prepared. He even stayed outside the last night because he couldn’t make it to the cabin and supposedly was very exhausted. We gave him good food and were generally happy that he arrived at the cabin instead of us finding him on the way back down in the deep snow.
After warming up at the already heated cabin, receiving food and advice from us, and going back down to the street on the next day with him, it seemed like he learned 3 very important things while hiking especially in a dangerous area like Northern Norway in winter:
Prepare for the worst predictable on the trip
Bring sufficient and nourishing food for staying out longer than expected
Turn around when there is doubt about a safe way to continue
This is what Niingshytta looked like from close up before we started shoveling the door free from snow (we put the shovel there before taking the picture).
For the last night next in Northern Norway we then decided for a normal hostel close to the fjord to take a proper shower (more than snow after the sauna) and wash some clothes. We can highly recommend the Bogen hostel with an amazing view of the fjord. It was spectacular during the sunny spring days and beautiful at night, as we were very lucky that we could see quickly moving Northern Lights above the fjord in our last night with the whole group.
The Danish capital is located even closer to the Baltic Sea than Stockholm with an arm of the sea going right by the city centre. Although being quite expensive, I consider Copenhagen a great place for culture and food. They have many great restaurants and some of the best in the world. In addition, they are much more relaxed about alcohol and also cheaper than where we had just come from: Norway and Sweden. Coming from Germany or almost any other country, it sounds weird to find better “good prices” in Copenhagen, but moving in this direction it actually is. This is another good reason to do Copenhagen in the end of the trip, because this way at least we were more motivated to go out and try some good food and craft beer.
In our just 1 complete day, we managed to see a good amount of the beautiful buildings and places in the center. Christiansborg castle was a good way to start through the city center and walk towards the Rosenborg castle and botanical gardens. The castle “Festningen” is good limit for walking north of the city center because it’s a nice place with very good views to the other side of the harbour. When walking through the city center, I appreciated seeing the Amalienborg Palace from the outside and the Marble Church from the inside. Walking past the opera and through the instagrammable Nyhavn is the standard for taking pictures. Going further east through Freetown Christiania governed as an anarchist commune is quite interesting and continuing further north to the Reffen street food area is worth for some good food and drinks on a relaxed weekend evening. Despite everything we managed to see in 1 full day, we would have loved to have some more time and are keen to go back and best experience the Copenhagen properly with locals.
To be honest, and to maintain everyone’s freedom to decide themselves, there are both arguments in favor and against skipping a flight and taking a train instead. If you consider my learnings as tips to enjoy the slower travel to destinations not that far away, this could open a door to a new positive experience of more sustainable traveling choices.
For myself - and hopefully for many of you ;-) - the calculation that the train emitted ca. 10% of the CO₂e emitted by a flight for the same journey is a good enough reason to take the train again in the future. The costs ending up similar for both options is another positive aspect. Personally, I really enjoy the slow travel with stopovers in other nice places in addition to just the “final” destination and the time to reflect in the sufficient free time on trains. My personal objective is thus to stick to this or similar travel modes as much as possible in order to use one of the larger (and easier) levers for reducing climate gas emissions and minimize climate change effects where I can.
In case you’re planning to take a train for your next vacation, I would suggest that you prepare yourself by accepting the disanvantages and focus on enjoying the positive aspects. Personally, I believe that we need to experience positive moments and share these in order to accelerate the change to a more sustainable traveling future.
In this spirit, let me hope that after you decided, you do not regret what you may have missed, but manage to enjoy the positive aspects of your decision. At least until you have a chance for the next decision and by then I hope that your experience with trains will have been good enough that you decide for the train again.
We should use and foster what should grow to make the world a better place: in this case train systems and options for sustainable traveling. The world is still driven by demand and if we jointly create the demand, the options should improve and become more abundant.
Spreadsheet links to my basic calculations:
Sources for climate gas emission input:
German long-distance trains on average: 0,032 kg CO2 /km * person)
German local trains: 0,058 kg CO2 /km * person)
German ICE high-speed train acc. to DB: 0,001 kg CO2 /km * person)
Swedish long-distance trains (not high-speed): 0,0039 kg CO2 /km * person)
CO2 emissions for flights: Atmosfair
Feedback
As for everything I’m blogging or writing elsewhere, please feel free to comment or message me about any questions :)
I’m not an expert and hoping to learn from you, as well: about new research, ideas or frameworks, as well as what I did good, bad or where I’m not informed about the latest information yet.