How Expensive is Norway?

‘People moving to Norway has made Norway richer, economically, but also our culture has become more rich in many ways’ – Jens Stoltenberg

I’ve often found along our travels that certain countries get tagged with certain stereotypes that are either unfair or completely untrue. I’ve walked up some pretty steep hills in Holland, I know a lot of very intelligent Americans and I’m even sure I met a funny German once.

Before we flew off to Norway in September 2016 after oohig and aahing about Fjords and Trolls the other thing everyone commented on before we went was how expensive it would be. Problem was it all felt a bit too much like hearsay. No one had actually been who could shed some light on exactly how much things would cost, like someone knows someone who knows someone, who’s cousin’s wife’s gynecologist once went and spent £9 on a beer. The internet also wasn’t all that informative, as when looking for the average price of a pint of beer for example, prices i found ranged from £3.60 to £15!

We went to Iceland in 2015, which was pricy, but like London pricy to a Northerner. It was steep but still affordable, so that’s kind of the mindset I was going for when we set off.

So, how expensive really is Norway?

Not to put too fine a point on it. It’s bloody expensive. Here’s a price breakdown for some of the stuff we spent money on while we were there:

• Two pints of local draught lager – £17

• 1 frozen pizza from a supermarket – £8

• Slice of chocolate cake from a take away deli – £6

• 2 small self serve take away coffees (from a machine) – £5

• 30 hours in a city centre underground car park – £38

• 1 slice of cheesecake on a dessert menu – £13

• 1 footlong Subway sandwich – £10.50

• 1 pint of lager & 1 large (250ml) glass of wine – £22

• Entrance into the Bergen Aquarium – £19 each

We tried to save money where we could – by sharing a sandwich in Subway for lunch, staying in mostly self catering accommodation buying food from supermarkets and taking our own duty free drink over so we weren’t spending an obscene amount of money in the pub. But of course we were still on our holidays and we wanted to treat ourselves as well and eat and drink out where it was reasonable to do so.

So there’s a bit of first hand advice at  how expensive Norway really is. If you take one piece of advice away it would be to expect to pay pretty much double what you’d pay in the UK, I have to be honest though, that chocolate fudge cake was worth every penny!