Aurland
9 villages
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Where the Aurlandsfjord meets the valley road, and the whole parish still calls it home.
The heart of the municipality
Aurlandsvangen — known simply as “Vangen” to those who live there — sits at the head of the Aurlandsfjord where the water narrows into the valley of Aurlandsdalen. It has long served as the administrative and trading center of Aurland, the place where the outlying farms and fjord-side hamlets — Undredal, Flåm, Gudvangen, Dyrdal and the rest — came together for church, market, and council.
Behind the village the old post road climbs toward Aurlandsfjellet, the “Snow Road,” a high mountain route open only through the short mountain summer, connecting Vangen to the Lærdal valley beyond. Below it, the fjord opens south toward Flåm and north into the wider Sognefjord, the route generations of Aurland families took to market, to church, and eventually to the ships that carried so many of them abroad.
Today Vangen still holds the parish church, the old wooden warehouses along the shore, and the quiet rhythm of a fjord village that has never stopped being the place everyone else in Aurland measures themselves against.