What a visitor's money does in Norway: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Norwegian Krone (NOK) · 1 EUR = 10.8 NOK · 1 USD = 9.4 NOK
Norway is effectively cashless. Cards are taken for a coffee, a bus and a car park, and several places will not accept notes at all. There is no reason to change money before you come.
Avoid: nothing, because you will not use one
Use: DNB minibank in Svolvær or Leknes
Norway is effectively cashless and cards work for a coffee, a bus and a car park. A little cash is only worth carrying for an unstaffed roadside fish stall with an honesty box.
From the airport: Oslo airport to the centre 900–1,100 kr, against 230 kr on the airport train
Fish, obviously: skrei cod in winter, salmon year-round, and fiskesuppe — a creamy fish soup that is a meal. Persetorsk and raspeballer are the old Bergen dishes. Everything in Norway costs about twice what it should, and the supermarket bakery is how people cope.
Arctic char and skrei, king crab from further north, and reindeer served as a steak or as finnbiff, a stew. Mack brews here and calls itself the world’s northernmost brewery, which it is not any more but the beer is good.
Cod, in every form the Norwegians invented to keep it: fresh skrei in February and March, stockfish dried on racks all summer, and the tongues, which children traditionally cut for pocket money and which are better than they sound.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
LofotenNorwayMountains that come straight out of the sea, above the Arctic Circle, in a place the Gulf Stream keeps liveable
BergenNorwayWooden warehouses on the wharf, seven mountains behind, and the gateway to the longest fjords in the world
TromsøNorwayThree hundred kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, with the northern lights overhead and a sun that does not set in June