Lysefjord

Where it sits. The Lysefjord cuts 42 kilometres inland from the Ryfylke coast of Rogaland, beginning about 25 kilometres east of Stavanger and ending at the isolated village of Lysebotn. It is narrow, straight and extraordinarily deep in proportion to its width, with rock walls that fall close to vertical for more than a thousand metres in places. The name means light fjord and is usually explained by the pale granite of those walls, which take on an almost white cast in flat weather. Only two settlements sit on its entire length — Forsand near the mouth and Lysebotn at the head — because there is virtually nowhere else level enough to build.

The shape of the water. The fjord's profile is counter-intuitive and worth understanding, because it explains the landscape above it. Where the Lysefjord meets the open sea near Forsand it is only about 13 metres deep, a shallow rock sill left by the glacier that carved it. Inland it plunges, exceeding 400 metres beneath Preikestolen. In other words the fjord is a deep trough with a shallow lip, gouged by ice and then flooded when the sea rose after the last glaciation. The Norwegian geologist Bjørn G. Andersen mapped that glacial retreat in detail in the 1950s, and the sequence he described is legible from a boat: hanging valleys, polished slabs, and waterfalls that arrive from side valleys hundreds of metres above the water rather than at it. Victor Hugo, who visited in 1866, put the fjord into Toilers of the Sea as a place of near-supernatural menace.

On screen. The Lysefjord is the container for two of the most photographed features in Norway, and the productions that used them were buying this landscape as much as the rocks themselves. Mission: Impossible – Fallout staged its cliff-edge finale on Preikestolen, 604 metres above the fjord's northern shore; the second season of Vikings ended with Ragnar Lothbrok sitting on the same shelf. Higher and further in, the Kjerag wall on the southern side has appeared in music videos and viral films since the mid-2000s. BASE jumping is legal along the cliffs, and the aerial footage that circulates from here — figures stepping off a wall with a fjord a kilometre below — has probably done more to fix this place in the public imagination than any feature film.

What you actually do here. The classic approach is by water. Sightseeing boats run from Stavanger's harbour up the full length of the fjord and back in three to four hours, passing beneath Preikestolen, nosing under the Hengjane waterfall and stopping at the Vagabonds' Cave, a shelf of rock in the wall that boats can slide alongside. Car ferries connect Lauvvika with Lysebotn and provide a slower, cheaper version of the same journey. On foot the options are exceptional: the Preikestolen trail from the north side, the Kjerag route from Øygardstøl above Lysebotn, and — the connoisseur's choice — the wooden staircase at Flørli, 4,444 steps climbing beside a disused hydroelectric penstock from the fjord edge to 740 metres, reckoned the longest wooden stairway in the world and reachable only by boat.

Practicalities. Stavanger is the natural base, with an international airport, a preserved old town of white timber houses and a full range of accommodation; the Lysefjord Bridge, opened in 1997, is the only road crossing of the fjord, and the Ryfylke tunnel has made the northern shore much quicker to reach by car. Lysebotn has a handful of rooms and a campsite and fills up in the short summer season. Weather is Atlantic and changeable, with rainfall high through the autumn; a sailing that looks pointless in low cloud is often the more atmospheric one, since the walls dissolve upward into fog.

Getting there and timing. May to September brings the full schedule of ferries, sightseeing boats and buses, together with open mountain roads at the eastern end. June offers close to twenty hours of usable light. Late September is quieter, colder and often clearer. Winter narrows things considerably — reduced sailings, closed mountain roads, and hiking that requires proper equipment — but the fjord itself does not freeze, and a still January morning here, with snow to the waterline and no other vessel in sight, is worth the inconvenience.