Stegastein

Why this place

Stegastein is a stop, not a destination — but it’s the kind of stop that earns being remembered. A fifteen-minute bus ride up the mountain road from Flåm puts you on a wooden platform that seems to disappear off the side of the cliff over an 800-meter drop.

What happens here

The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) arrive by tour bus from Flåm in the early afternoon of Day 3. The platform itself takes ten minutes to walk; the rest of the time is for taking it in.

Things to know:

• The platform is open to the public and free
• Glass safety wall at the end, sloping outward — looks more dramatic than it is
• The drive up is part of the experience: switchbacks, viewpoints, mountain road
• The view: down the length of the Aurlandsfjord toward the open sea

Background

Stegastein was completed in 2006 as part of the Norwegian Scenic Routes project (Nasjonale turistveger) — a national initiative to add architecture and viewpoints to eighteen selected stretches of road across the country. The platform is built of laminated pine and steel and was designed by the Norwegian-Canadian firm Saunders & Wilhelmsen (Todd Saunders and Tommie Wilhelmsen, then practicing in Bergen). It cantilevers thirty metres out from the rock at the end of a switchback road, with a glass safety wall at the tip that slopes outward — pushing the eye toward the drop rather than the barrier.

The structure has won multiple architecture awards (including the AR+D Emerging Architecture Award, 2007) and appears on more Norway tourism posters than any other piece of contemporary architecture in the country.