How much does a Norway trip cost? [2024]

We’ve all heard that Scandinavia is more expensive compared to other European countries. If you’re planning a trip there, you might be wondering how expensive it really is, and how much a Norway trip is going to cost you.

After spending six weeks travelling through Norway in our campervan, we can provide a detailed breakdown of how much a Norway trip from the UK will cost you.

We’re going to base this off how much we spent while in Norway, and we'll also include some costs for getting there, so you can plan your budget more accurately.

Things to consider

Are you taking your own vehicle?

Driving to Norway in your own vehicle will significantly reduce the costs for you, especially if you are able to use it for accommodation. We did our Norway road trip in our own campervan which, as we’ll get onto, meant that our accommodation costs were very low.

If you plan to fly to Norway and rent a vehicle or accommodation, you will need to add these costs alongside ours. 

Do you need to pay for accommodation?

Accommodation is often one of the biggest costs on a trip. Because we were travelling in our campervan, we were able to cut back on accommodation costs drastically. The average cost per night in a hotel in Norway is around £100 per night. 

Alternatively, you could think about renting a campervan with a company such as GoBoony or Indie Campers. Or, even if you don’t have a campervan, you could still take your car and pack a tent!

How far do you plan to drive?

Moving costs money! On our road trip, because we had enough time to do so, we drove pretty far up North in Norway. Some people choose to go even further north than we did, all the way to the North Cape. The more you drive, the more it’s going to cost you because you will be paying for more fuel. 

How much does a Norway trip cost from UK: Reaching Norway 

Let’s talk about reaching Norway and how much it is going to cost you to get there from the UK. Whether you’re planning to go to Norway for 2 weeks or 2 months, you are going to be looking at paying this amount to get there.

If you're flying to Norway, Oslo will likely be the airport you fly to. Even if your final destination is further north, you'll probably find yourself in Oslo for a connecting flight. Fortunately, flights from the UK to Oslo are pretty cheap, especially if you're flexible with your travel dates, you can find tickets from London for as low as £45.

If, like us, you are planning to take your own vehicle, there are a few options on your route to Norway. You could either get Le Shuttle, the Dover-Calais ferry or Harwich to the Hook of Holland.

As we didn’t feel it saved that much driving time to get the ferry to Holland, we decided to go for Le Shuttle which cost us £170. Personally, we find this easier with a dog, so even though it is more expensive than the ferry, it works best for us. 

From here, again you have a few options to choose from with ferries from Denmark or Germany to Norway and Sweden, or you can opt for the Øresund Bridge from Denmark. You do have to pay for the bridge with the cost depending on your vehicle size.

We chose to drive up through Germany and Denmark, spending some time exploring the countryside here. We got the ferry from Hirtshals to Kristiansand, costing us around £200. 

We spent just under £400 in fuel to get to Norway, but we didn’t take the most direct route as we were also exploring the countries we were driving through. 

Costs in Norway

Let’s get to it, how much did it cost once we were in Norway. As we said, we spent 6 weeks road tripping Norway in July and August 2023 and this was part of a bigger Europe tour. This means that we don’t necessarily treat it like a big holiday and we do try to keep our costs down, so we can travel for longer.

Having said that, we also aren’t very big spenders! We enjoy the simple things in life and like spending time in nature, hiking, swimming, paddle boarding and just simply enjoying our camp spots. Therefore, lots of the things we like to do are free.

Fuel 

Once in Norway, we spent £530.67 on fuel. We drove approximately 2,800 miles in total because we drove as far north as the island of Senja. If you don’t plan to travel as far as we did, you’ll be able to cut back on this cost. We kept an eye on fuel prices as we travelled around.

Travel tip!

In Norway the fuel prices change daily (we saw diesel range from 16.5 NOK to 23 NOK in the space of a few days), so it’s worth keeping tabs on the prices and filling up when you see it at a low price. 

Parking 

We spent £18.90 on parking in Norway, luckily we were able to park for free a lot of the time and our main parking costs were for popular hikes.

Public transport 

We spent £309.80 on public transport, which was entirely ferries. This cost does include our ferry from Denmark to Norway, which as we said was around £200 for one way. Our most expensive ferries in Norway were to the Lofoten islands and from Andøya to Senja. Most of the smaller ferries that crossed fjords were less than £10.

Travel tip!

An awesome tip is that you can get some ferries for free! One that is particularly worth knowing about is the ferry to Lofoten, if you take a longer route via Værøy islands then you can get your ferry for free! You can find the free ferries on the Autopass Ferje website.  

Camping/Accommodation

£0, yes you read that right £0! Norway is one of the few countries in Europe where it is legal to wild camp, even in campervans! This means you can camp for free, most places in Norway, simply by following some basic rules; 

• Tents, vans and motorhomes must be at least 150m from houses and cabins.
• Don’t camp on private properties and farmland.
• Show consideration for your surroundings.
• Take any rubbish home with you.
• If you don’t have a toilet in your vehicle, make sure you find somewhere far away from your camp spot and rivers when you have "to go", dig a hole and cover with soil after.

Read more about the right of access.

Tolls

So, this one will take some explaining. In Norway there are a lot of toll roads, tunnels, and bridges, with electronic toll booths that capture your vehicle's licence plate. There are a few options for paying tolls as a tourist, which you can find out about on Autopass. 

We didn’t have this information when we visited so we did rely on the automated invoice based on your number plate, however, we have not recieved this yet and therefore didn’t spend any money on tolls.

Activities

We didn’t spend any money on activities, yep £0! That’s because the main thing that we enjoyed doing was hiking, which is completely free apart from sometimes having to pay for parking. This shouldn’t be taken for granted, because in many mountain areas across Europe, particularly the Alps, you have to pay a lot of money for cable cars to hike. In Switzerland alone we paid £300 alone on cable cars.

Food shopping 

Over 6 weeks we spent £521.80 on our food shopping. It’s worth noting that we did do some food shopping both in the UK and Germany because we knew that the cost of groceries was going to be more expensive in Norway than either of those countries. 

While in Norway we shopped at Kiwi and Rema 1000, which are supposedly the cheapest supermarkets in Norway. We also tried to buy ‘First price’ products where they were available as these are the cheaper, unbranded items.

Eating out 

We didn’t spend any money on eating out because we knew it would be expensive and we would rather travel for longer than eat fancy meals. We have also previously been to Norway on a short cruise where we got to try some Norwegian delicacies, so we didn’t feel like we were missing out on this trip. 

Gas

We have a campingaz gas bottle which can be quite expensive to fill up, it often depends which country you are from, which fixing/bottle you have and which country you are in. In Norway, it’s easier than most countries and although many things are expensive in Norway, gas is not and we were able to fill up our bottles for around £26. 

Other 

We spent £22.20 on other items in Norway. This category mostly includes doing our laundry but also a few things for our dog. If you’re travelling for a while in Norway you will have to do laundry at some point and this was something we struggled to find.

We did find one great spot at a harbour facility where we were able to have warm showers and do all of our laundry and don’t worry it’s not the only one, you can use the GoMarina app to find other services like this across Norway. You can find this in our useful apps for Norway.

Well, hopefully you don’t have this extra cost that we did. A speeding fine. £410.46. So, be careful not to speed, Norway is very strict on speeding and locals warned us there are often mobile speed cameras in popular tourist areas. 

Total

In total, our Norway road trip cost £1840.66 for 6 weeks. We think this is amazing considering all the places we went and all the beautiful nature we saw!

To add some context, we have travelled in our campervan across Europe for 18 months and on average we spend around £500 per person per month. Excluding our speeding fine, we were not far off that cost per month, which just shows that Norway doesn’t have to be more expensive than other countries in Europe. 

If you’re interested in our general costs of road tripping Europe, be sure to check out our blog post How much does a road trip in Europe cost. 

How much does a Norway trip cost?

So, there you have it, that’s how much our Norway trip cost us. We hope we’ve shown you that it’s completely possible to travel to Norway on a budget. The best way to do this is by doing a road trip around Norway. Due to the right to roam and the fact that nature is so accessible in Norway, you can manage to spend a little amount of money on activities and overnight stays! How amazing. 

It’s also useful to know that the Norwegian Krone (NOK) reached a historical low against the Euro in 2023 which means that it’s much cheaper to visit Norway now than it has been in the past. Make the most of it while you can!

Want to know more about travelling in Norway, check out our Ultimate Norway Road Trip Blog.