12 Ways To Save Money & Keep Costs Down On A Trip To Norway

We’ve just returned from a trip to Norway! This trip has been in the making for years, so I’m thrilled to say it was worth the wait – but I thought I’d start by addressing the big question everyone has about Norway: just how expensive is it? And how the hell do you save money?

Norway is virtually impossible to travel on a tight budget, and it’s one of the few trips where we haven’t even tried to keep costs down on a lot of things. Some of this is through choice, some largely through necessity, and some because they’re unavoidable.

Everything you’ve heard is true: Norway is expensive.

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Our original plan was to visit on a cruise – small cruise ships leave five minutes from our house, and it’s a great way to keep costs down when all food and accommodation is included. I’m generally not bothered about cruises, but the one I’ve always wanted to do is the Norwegian fjords as it’s undoubtedly the best way to see them. The problem… we were booked on a cruise last year, it was cancelled, and the equivalent cruises this year were both more expensive and ended up clashing with family things (the one cruise that didn’t clash with anything was longer and WAY out of budget, ugh).

My challenge, then, was to devise a plan that would be cheaper than the cruise.

That said, Norway is a huge bucket list item for me – one of two *real* bucket list countries left – and I didn’t want to go just to stay in grotty accommodation, flunk out on activities because of the cost, and starve myself for the trip. So this is in no way a “how to travel Norway on a budget” post, and apart from anything else I think it’s impossible anyway. Even hostels aren’t much cheaper than hotels if you’re not doing it solo.

Here are a few ways we DID manage to keep the costs down – and a few tips on how we could have done it better.

Choose hotels with breakfast included

We found a really nice hotel in Oslo, but the catch was that breakfast wasn’t included. We opted instead for a reasonable hotel including breakfast, which was even cheaper than the room-only hotel, let alone the savings we’d make on food.

If breakfast is included, I like to stuff myself in the morning, and occasionally pack a couple of pastries for lunch as well. In Iceland, my friend and I would take bread, meat and cheese and make our own sandwiches for later!

I packed a few pastries every day so we managed to almost always skip lunch, which meant we were only paying for one meal a day.

One thing I will say is that hotels in Norway are actually really reasonable – we paid on average about £100 a night in high season, and all our hotels included breakfast (apart from one which was an exception). It feels like a weird disparity considering how expensive absolutely everything else is!

Get cashback on hotels

I booked our hotels through booking.com and hotels.com, and got cashback on all of them. Hotels.com at the time had an offer for 11% cashback! Do shop around though, because our Flam accommodation was only available on Booking.

I get cashback through TopCashback which saves me loads of money on countless things, not just travel.

Join hotel membership programs

A slightly different option… when researching hotels, I found that if I joined a free membership program for the hotel, it would give me member rates that were cheaper than the third party sites. However taking cashback into account we still saved a little bit of money so we stuck with those. It goes to show though that it’s always worth checking out the hotels directly when you find one you like on Booking et al, and you often get perks like better rooms if you book direct.

For the record, we stayed at a couple of Scandic hotels in Bergen and Oslo, and this was one of the places that offered membership prices.

Find street food

You’re already saving money on breakfast, but it’s the other meals that can really break the bank. If you fill up on breakfast, you might not need lunch, or you could pack a picnic, but dinner is unavoidable and short of going to McDonald’s (the only “budget” place to eat in Norway), it can be hard to find somewhere that isn’t going to put your budget out of whack.

In Oslo, there are several street food markets, including indoor ones. We went to Oslo Street Food on our last day, but Mathallen and Barcode also look really good.

In Bergen, cheap food is slim pickings to be honest, but there’s always the hot dog stall where you can pick up cheap reindeer hot dogs! A unique culinary experience AND saving money? Definitely check out Trekroneren at least once during your stay.

On our second night in Bergen, we went to the fish market and had something from one of the stalls which was also cheaper than it would have been eating out at a restaurant. However to give you an idea of how much things are, the burger I had from a stall was about 20€, so even these might not feel like budget options on the surface!

Pick up food in the supermarkets

Even the supermarkets aren’t cheap – but they will undoubtedly save you money!

Also, importantly: not all supermarkets are equal.

We generally bought drinks and snacks in Kiwi, and Rema 1000 is meant to be similar. Joker is more expensive, so try and avoid that one if you’re on a budget – we went in on our first day and balked at the prices.

Drink water

It’s no secret that drinking in Norway is expensive AF. We decided to have one alcoholic drink during our time in Norway. A local beer and a 330ml bottle of cider came to 25€ and we did not drink again.

However even soft drinks add up way too quickly. I took an empty bottle with me, and Ash reused one of his bottles from the first day. I actually accidentally bought some diluting juice (I thought it was flavoured water!) so I lived off that for the rest of the trip, but essentially I just drank water every day which helped to keep costs down for more important things.

Take the train – and choose cheaper times

When we booked the Oslo to Bergen train, the ideal time of 08:25 was sold out… which left us with 12:03 for double the price, or 06:25 for much cheaper. We had to settle for the 06:25, which meant an early start, but also would give us longer in Bergen.

The overnight train is much cheaper too, but for such a scenic journey it seems a shame to do this, even if it would also save money on accommodation. This is really where the give and take was for us on this trip – we weren’t willing to sacrifice things that would make our trip infinitely better. However there are definitely ways like this to save money if you’re on a tight budget.

Pick & choose tours & activities

A really popular choice for travelling in Norway is to do the Norway In A Nutshell “tour”. This is actually a self-guided tour where they provide you with all the transport tickets and then off you go and explore yourself. As you can imagine, they charge a premium versus the actual rates, and although I was tempted to book it, I decided to look into doing it independently. Funnily enough, I was looking at various different routes, before settling on pretty much the exact Norway In A Nutshell route – without actually realising it was the same!

However, they’re not the only expensive ones. Everything seems to be expensive. There’s a fantastic stave church around a 45 minute drive from Flam – but with no public transport any more, you can do a half-day tour that costs a cool £50 per person. The 20 minute drive to Stegastein viewpoint from Flam? That’ll be £30 return on the bus. Even a tour going to a waterfall in Eidfjord is over £50, which is why we opted to spend the whole time in Eidfjord itself. And if you think you can save money by hiring bikes for the day instead… you cannot. In Flam, that’ll be over 40€.

The one thing I really wanted to do was get out on the fjords, especially given that we were originally meant to be cruising through a whole heap of them. The next best thing? Day cruises!

There are quite a few options depending on where you are. From Bergen, we could do their most popular cruise to Mostraumen, or even all the way along Sognefjord to Flam, but I found a day cruise instead that goes through the more famous Hardangerfjord to Eidfjord. Ultimately, I chose that one and we also did the Gudvangen to Flam cruise – but they are definitely pricey, so it’s important to narrow down what you want to do.

The same goes for activities – if I had an unlimited budget, there are tons of things I would do in Norway, from fjord kayaking tours to the Flam zipline, but because everything is so expensive, you have to prioritise what you want out of the trip, and I’d probably recommend choosing activities that are really unique to Norway, or provide an exceptional experience of Norway specifically, otherwise you’re probably paying over the odds for activities you could do elsewhere.

Hike instead of doing the tourist options

In Bergen, there are two viewpoints that can be reached by funicular or cable car – but as per everything else in Norway, these don’t come cheap. The funicular to Mount Fløyen is 16€ return (160 nok) but it’s only a 45 minute hike to the top, so if you’re able to do a short hike like this, I would choose that!

Ulriken is accessible via a 38€ cable car – but the hike is around 3 hours, so if you’re in the market for a longer hike, then go for it, but it’s definitely more of a pay-off taking the easier option. But it’s also expensive.

Similarly, you could hike up to Stegastein viewpoint from Aurlandsvangen, but having driven it, I think that would be a really tough hike (and I’ve seen people say they found Trolltunga, a 10-12 hour hike, considerably easier!!).

Book everything in advance

We only booked our trip a month before departure, and some hotels I’d looked up previously were either no longer available, or they’d shot up in price. I still managed to find some good deals, but the ones I’d been set on at £85 had to become budget hotels at £100 instead. Over the course of a week, that adds up!

It doesn’t help that we travelled in high season, but I imagine the same applies year round.

Also, I’m not sure if again it’s because it’s high season, but look at the difference in the cost of the trains (this is from Oslo to Bergen):

Versus:

That’s something I should have really researched before booking flights, as we could have got flights the same price later in the month. I’m not really sure why the trains fluctuate so much – I’ve just looked at another day that same week, and it’s more expensive for the earlier ones, but cheaper for the later ones!

Overall, there were ton of things I’ve learned from this and my budget traveller mindset is kicking me a bit, though seeing that there’s no rhyme or reason to the train prices means it could be a bit difficult to plan around this.

(P.S. another tip – some of the Flam to Oslo journeys look really cheap – but that’s because the first journey is on a bus to Voss instead of the famous Flam railway to Myrdal, which you do not want to miss by mistake!)

Weigh up whether to do an open-jaw flight

We flew into Oslo and back out of Oslo, but our route was basically a loop via Bergen. I wondered if we would save money by flying into Oslo and home from Bergen, or the other way around, but unfortunately Bergen flights were WAY too expensive comparatively. It was still slightly cheaper just to get the train back to Oslo.

However, this could be something to consider, especially if you’re going further afield in Norway.

…maybe go on a cruise

There’s a whole host of pros and cons to booking a cruise to Norway vs visiting independently. The main pro of doing it ourselves, of course, is that we could do what we wanted. Want a night in Flam? YES. Be able to do the Flam railway if the cruise doesn’t go there? Also yes. The scenic train ride from Oslo to Bergen? Add it to the list.

However, you get to see a whole lot more of the fjords on a cruise. There are loads of itineraries to choose from – our main requirement was that it included Bergen. Others serve Alesund or Stavanger. Some visit Olden at the end of one of the most spectacular fjords, others don’t.

Budget-wise, originally when we were looking at cruises, it was around £700 per person for a 5-night cruise. This year, we were looking at more like £1000pp – for the same cruise! – and for the 8 day cruise it was £1400pp, which is just too out of our budget. What’s annoying is there were cruises from Southampton for far, far cheaper – but then we’ve got to get to Southampton and spend extra staying there before and after, not to mention the extra time off, plus the cruises are normally longer as there’s more time at sea. But at £500pp, it’s a no-brainer that it’s cheaper than doing it yourself if it’s convenient enough.

For me, Norway is 100% worth the cost. I’m glad we waited until we could afford to do it, instead of having to scrimp on as much as possible like we normally do, but equally there were plenty of things I did try to save some money on, especially as there were a lot of other things I wanted to splurge on. Keeping the costs down on things that were less important made a huge difference to what we could do, such as being able to justify two fjord cruises.

I can’t wait to share everything we got up to, because this was a real dream trip! We had a superb time throughout the whole holiday, and Norway is a truly incredible country to explore.

(I already want to go back – but I will definitely be following some of my own advice if we do!)

In the meantime, read more about some beautiful areas of Europe:
⭐ Slovenia: Loving Ljubljana & Visiting Lake Bled In March
⭐ A Day Trip To Rila Monastery, Bulgaria
⭐ Hiking & Heating Up In Kotor, Montenegro
⭐ Climbing Stac Pollaidh, One Of Scotland’s Best Hikes
⭐ A Day Trip Guide: San Marino From Bologna

And some tips on saving money on travel:
⭐ 50 Ways To Seriously Save Money To Travel
⭐ 12 Ways To Save Money While Travelling