Flåm

Home, and the way out of it

Flåm sits at the innermost point of the Aurlandsfjord, in a broad green valley that has drawn travelers for well over a century. It owes much of its fame to the Flåm Railway (Flåmsbana), completed in stages through the 1940s, which climbs from the fjord to the mountain station at Myrdal on the Bergen Line — a rise of more than 800 meters in just twenty kilometers, making it one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in the world.

Long before the railway, Flåm was simply another farming village at the water’s edge, its residents making the same fjordside living as their neighbors in Aurlandsvangen and Undredal. The railway changed that, turning a farm valley into one of Norway’s best-known gateways for travelers heading into — or out of — the fjord country.

For families with roots here, Flåm has always meant two things at once: home, and the way out of it.