The North Cape

Imagine a place where the sun never goes down in summer, where the only land between you and the northpole is Svalbard archipelago and where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Arctic Ocean. That place is the North Cape in Norway. Today is day 8 of our roadtrip through Scandinavia and the North Cape is our absolute goal of the journey. Today we’ll be standing there, watching the midnight sun and enjoying the remarkable view over the Barentz sea.

• On top of the world!
• Why we didn’t pick the right day to visit the North Cape
• Entrance to the North Cape
• Puffins
• Knivskjelodden: Europe’s real northernmost point

On top of the world!

Never in your life have you’ve been this north! The black globe symbolises your victory of reaching the northernmost point of Europe. Winters here are cold with a lot of snow. In summer the sun won’t go down for very long. It doesn’t matter in which season you visit the North Cape, it will always be an unique experience!  You can drive right to the North Cape by following the main road A69. Walk right through the visitors centre to the big black global and you’re there: on top of the world!🌍 😄 

Entrance of the visitors centre at the North Cape. ©Denis Simonet

Why we didn’t pick the right day to visit the North Cape

We didn’t pick the best day to visit the North Cape. To show you why we didn’t pick the right day I added a picture down below:

On our way to the North Cape. © My Little Travel Stories

There was fog everywhere! We couldn’t see anything… But it was our only day left at the Nordkapp Camping before we would go south again so we went anyway. We parked our car not far from the entrance of the North Cape and we walked the last kilometer to the visitor centre. It was raining outside and there was no view at all so we looked around in the visitor centre. There is a nice giftshop and you can watch a movie about the North Cape downstairs. We enjoyed a nice cappuccino before we went back to our car through the cold fog. ❄️😳

Entrance to the North Cape

The North Cape is very easily reachable by car. The main road (E69) goes all the way to the top and they have nice parking space as well. But be aware of the fact that you pay a lot of money when you drive all the way to the North Cape by car. Nevertheless, there are a few tips that can help you safe money when visiting the North Cape:

• There is a student discount so bring your student identity card.
• You can make a choice between two different tickets. Always take the ticket with limited acces to the North Cape, because when you entered, no one asks you to show any ticket.
• Reaching the North Cape by bike or by foot gives you free entrance, so try to park your car somewhere else. At the beginning of the path to Knivskjelodden is room to park your car but this is still a 8 kilometer walk to the North Cape. Instead of parking there, you could drive a little further to the North Cape and park along the road. There is not that much space. Every now and then there is space for one or two cars. You might need some luck. We were lucky and parked our car 1 kilometer from the entrance of the North Cape. Not that bad if you imagine in what kind of weather conditions we had to walk to the North Cape.🙂  And, it saved us a lot of money. 😇

Beautiful!

Puffins

Not far away from the coast of Gjesvær lies the island Gjesværstappanthe. During summer it’s – because of the abundance of fish – the breeding ground of hundreds of birds, including puffins. I love puffins. They are so incredibly cute. 😍  Their parrot-like, large colourful bill is very impressive and have you noticed the red and black markings around their eyes? The bird cliff of Gjesværstappan is the home to hundreds of thousands of puffins.

Photo by: Bragi Thor

Knivskjelodden: Europe’s real northernmost point

Although the North Cape claims to be Europe’s northernmost point, Knivskjelodden seemed to be the real northernmost point (71° 11′ 08″ NB). Unlike the North Cape, Knivskjelodden can not be reached by car (nor by bike). It takes a 19 kilometers walk to get there and to get back to your car again. We parked our car along the E69 and started our journey to Europe’s northernmost point well-prepared. The surface on the road to Knivskjelodden is very rough and very rocky. The rocky roads alternated here and there with swamps and mud. It’s no easy road to walk. The average speed of our walk was 2,66 km/hour. You can do the math about how long it took us to complete this 19 kilometers walk. But we were determined to reach Europe’s northernmost point. Read here about our journey to Europe’s real northernmost point Knivskjelodden.

View on Knivskjelodden from the North Cape. ©Travel photography Ilse

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