Norway · Scandinavia
Trollstigen
The Troll's Ladder. Norway's most famous mountain road with 11 hairpin bends carved into a sheer cliff face alongside the Stigfossen waterfall.
- Length
- 5.0 km
- Avg gradient
- 9.0%
- Max gradient
- 12%
- Elevation gain
- 450 m
- Summit
- 858 m
- Hairpins
- 11
Versants
- From Åndalsnes — 5.0 km at 9.0% (max 12%)
- From Valldal — 11.0 km at 7.4% (max 12%)
History
Trollstigen — "the Troll's Ladder" in Norwegian folklore — has been carrying traffic over this stretch of the Romsdalen mountains since 1936, originally as a working transport link between the villages of Valldal and Åndalsnes rather than a tourist road. The engineering hasn't changed much since: 11 hairpins switch back up a near-vertical mountainside next to the Stigfossen waterfall, narrow enough that anything longer than 13 metres is banned outright.
It's not a long climb by Alpine standards — about 12.2 km at an average of 7%, cresting at 858 m — and that's part of what makes it work as a cycling destination: the numbers are modest, the setting is not. Riders share the switchbacks with a steady stream of tour buses and rental cars in season, all of them there for the same view.
The road only exists half the year. It's a seasonal mountain pass, closed by snow and avalanche risk through the winter and opened again — the exact date depends on the year's snowfall — as the high route becomes passable again each spring.