Comparing Norway and Sweden - an actual vanlife blog post
The second reason I've been quiet on this blog lately is that I have actually been travelling. Unlike most travel bloggers, I don't tend to write much while exploring, I'm too busy! Plus my usual style of writing is to allow things to bubble away in my brain for a while rather than just writing whatever I see. But I thought it might be fun to do a quick comparison between the two main countries we visited - Norway and Sweden - taking account of the things that really matter to vanlifers, the vital stuff like toilets, internet and parking!
Scenery in Norway and Sweden
Norway is scenery, literally everywhere. You can't move for mountains, waterfalls, fjords, lakes, dramatic coastlines, glaciers... Every road you drive along forces you to stop repeatedly to take photos or just absorb it all. I genuinely think it's unlike anywhere else in Europe, in fact in terms of pure scenery it feels like a bit of a cheat code. Once you're in Norway it takes no effort to find views that anywhere else would take hours to get to and still be swamped by tourists. In fact you can become a bit numb to it all - Oh look, another stunning valley with waterfalls cascading down the sides of the mountains, and a perfectly still blue fjord at the bottom, hmm... what's for lunch? 10/10.
Sweden is more like a normal European country in the sense of having more farmland and woodland in between the mountains to the west and the coast to the east. At times you can drive for hours and see nothing but trees which is either absolutely wonderful or unbearably tedious depending on your point of view. The lakes and rivers provide variety though and some of the lake views we had from parkups were outstanding. 9/10
Wildlife in Norway and Sweden
Sweden edges this on account of not shooting all their wolves and bears on sight, they do carry out regular culls but they do at least allow a reasonable-ish number of both to cling on in various places around the country. They also just have more space suitable for a wider variety of life. We've seen beavers, moose, reindeer, osprey, snakes, frogs, fish, thousands of butterflies and other insects. They also have lynx hiding away somewhere in the vast woodlands, and wolverines, which we didn't manage to find either. 10/10
Norway does have puffins and musk ox to be fair, and we saw several sea eagles. The whale watching boat trip was also a definite highlight, with Pilot Whales coming right up to the boat and having a good look at us. Nevertheless I am deducting 1 point for doing their best to eradicate wolves and bears, and then needing to shoot moose because there are no natural predators to keep the numbers down! That'll teach them. 9/10
Driving in Norway and Sweden
Norway doesn't have a huge number of roads but we never encountered any in poor condition. They were exceptionally good, maybe due to the relatively low traffic on most of them. Norway's so sparsely populated that outside of the big cities the roads are pretty much always clear. In fact in many areas we encountered more foreign motorhomes and campervans than anything else.
It does however take a very long time to drive the entire length of Norway! Due to the nature of the terrain (mountains, bogs, fjords etc) the roads all wind around a lot. There are no motorways and even the main North-South road has a 70km/h limit for most of it. If you go off that road expect tunnels and ferry crossings. 12km long tunnels don't always give the most exciting scenery, although some throw in the odd weird bit of lighting to keep you awake. The ferries are cheap (would advise sorting out a flyte tag and ferry prepayment in advance to save money and make things easier) but they can slow you down. At one point we arrived at a ferry terminal at 7pm only to find we'd missed the last one for the day and had to sleep in the queue. There's also the odd toll road/bridge but these are fairly cheap although again I'd advise preparing ahead of time. 8/10
Sweden was actually undergoing a major roadworks programme while we were there. A lot of the roads we drove on were not in great condition and long stretches were in the middle of being improved. Hopefully by our next trip this will all be complete! There also seemed to be considerably more traffic than in Norway, although it's hard to say how much of this was due to the roadworks slowing everyone down. This along with the long stretches of identical scenery just made the driving a bit less enjoyable than Norway. Although on the plus side at least when there's no roadworks they have a decent speed limit! We went over a couple of toll bridges but like Norway its all automated invoicing etc, and very cheap. 7/10
Parkups in Norway and Sweden
This might become a whole post on its own! There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the whole concept of Allemansratten / allemannsretten by motorhome owners and campervanners. To be clear: It does not apply to us! When Norway and Sweden talk about the right to roam they mean exactly that. Roaming ON FOOT. Hiking and camping in nature, enjoying the mountains, forests and coastlines that belong to everyone, regardless of legal ownership.
It does not mean, in either country, that you have the right to park your 8 metre long giant white box wherever you feel like, unload all of your crap and sit around in that same spot for the next 2 weeks.
However it is definitely possible to find some incredible parkups in both countries while still following the rules that do absolutely 100% apply to you.
Norway gave us some truly memorable parkups. Swimming spots in fjords, parkups with mountain scenery, waterfalls cascading in the background. Sometimes all 3 of those at once. However the more touristy areas in the south had quite a few restrictions. Lots of car parks were designated as no overnight parking and you can't simply pull off the road and park up somewhere. Private property is still actually a thing and as mentioned Allemansratten doesn't mean you have the right to park your vehicle in someone's back garden.
Lofoten was another area with even more of a tourist problem. It's a stunning series of islands in the North of Norway but is a victim of its own success, with one main road leading through it all we literally ended up in a motorhome convoy at times, all heading between the same parkups desperately looking for a space.
There's also the issue of geography. Most of Norway consists of mountains or water, there aren't really many large expanses of flattish dry land, and I wouldn't really advise trying to park up in a bog. This was especially clear up towards NordCap where you get further North than the trees will grow and see vast areas of open land but still are quite restricted in terms of where you can actually park. 8/10
Sweden's allemannsretten is legally very similar to Norway but in practice we seemed to have far more success in Sweden, finding incredible parkups all over the place. Several national parks have roads and dirt tracks leading to fantastic out of the way spots often beside rivers or lakes, where you are legally allowed to park for up to 48 hours and usually include fire pits, benches and long drop toilets. These were probably some of the best parkups we have found anywhere in Europe, provided you're into nature, wildlife and solitude. One spot we spent a couple of nights at was not only an excellent lake for paddleboarding but in the evening we were able to spot beavers and a moose. The fact that parking up overnight in these spots is not only tolerated but actively encouraged is mindblowing to someone used to the English approach of sticking up height barriers and no camping signs any time a place gets popular. 10/10
Food Shopping in Norway and Sweden
OK lets get through this. Norway was a challenge! As vegetarians (and wannabe vegan) finding quality options in Norway was not easy and certainly not cheap. In fact to be blunt I think Norway is probably the worst country in Europe to be vegan. It simply doesn't seem to be a thing there. The supermarkets in general are just not great, they are quite small so have a limited selection anyway and the prices are the highest in Europe (maybe except for Switzerland). It was also a little sad to regularly see little discs of reindeer, moose and even whale meat in all sorts of random places including souvenir shops.
Only in one small town did we find a decent alternative to supermarkets - an asian food shop with a good selection of fresh fruit & veg outside, and some different vegetarian options inside. Then alongside that we stopped in at a bakery and spent about 12 euros on one loaf of bread and one cinnamon bun.
We ate out once in Norway. 2 pizzas and 2 small beers in a campsite cafe came to about 70 euros. That ended our dining out experiment.
But hey, we didn't go to Norway for the food! 4/10
Once we got into Sweden things changed dramatically. Supermarkets were bigger, prices were much more reasonable and the vegan selection was actually impressive. We found vegan options we'd never seen anywhere before (vegan doner kebab meat anyone??) and we could actually afford to give them a try without worrying that it would blow our entire food budget for the month. 8/10
Norway and Sweden have similar tastes in many ways - they like eating anything you can shoot/catch; they like pizza - a lot, in fact one of our relatively cheap staples in Norway ended up being mini pizzas on little bread 'discs'; Mexican food also seems very common in supermarkets, and finally but most importantly liquorice! After much experimentation with various liquorice options we came to the conclusion that the ones that don't leave a weird cat poo aftertaste are probably the best.
Internet in Norway and Sweden
Norway probably has the best, most reliable internet of any country I've been to. Regularly hitting 60mb+ even when out in the middle of nowhere. The only issue I personally had was in using VPNs which I need for work - for some reason they wouldn't hold the connection for more than a few minutes. Not something I've had anywhere else so I guess it must be something to do with the Norwegian networks. 8/10
Sweden has not managed to get to the same level of connectivity as Norway. In fact in many places we had no internet or virtually none. Which is fine if you just want to enjoy where you are, but having to work a few days a week makes things more awkward. Often we got at best 1-2mb when out in the middle of national parks or along the high coast. 5/10
Other Notes
Both countries really do provide excellent infrastructure for exploring nature. So many spots we stopped at, or walks we did had fire pits, quite often some form of shelter and a long drop toilet. They really take peoples' right to roam in nature seriously and I'd imagine as a result the Swedish and Norwegian people are probably more connected to nature than the majority of Europe. Perhaps that's also a reason why they are consistently found to be among the happiest.
Overall if Europe continues to endure these insane summer heatwaves then Sweden seems like the perfect escape. Tons of space, plenty of water to cool off in, and just such a relaxed feel to it. Whereas a return to Norway would probably only be for specific reasons - a trad climbing expedition perhaps, or a winter whale watching trip. Don't get me wrong, Norway's an amazing place and well worth seeing, but it's Sweden that won me over.