Finse Station ( no, Finse stasjon) is located in the mountain village of

Finse Finse is a mountain village area on the shore of the lake Finsevatnet in Ulvik municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The village is centered on Finse Station, a railway station on the Bergen Line. The village sits at an elevation of above sea ...

in the municipality of

Ulvik Ulvik is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The municipality stretches from the Hardangerfjord to the mountains that reach above sea level. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Ulvik. The villages of Osa and ...

Vestland Vestland is a county in Norway established on 1 January 2020. The county is located in Western Norway and it is centred around the city of Bergen, Norway's second largest city. The administrative centre of the county is the city of Bergen, where t ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. The station is served by up to seven daily (peak days only) express trains in each direction, normally three per day and one overnight trains, all operated by Vy. The

Finse Tunnel The Finse Tunnel ( no, Finsetunnelen) is a railway tunnel west of the village of Finse in Eidfjord Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The tunnel is part of the Bergen Line between the cities of Oslo and Bergen. It is the longest tunnel on ...

begins just west of the village and the

Rallarvegen Rallarvegen ( en, The Navvy Road) is a construction/access road in central Norway that is now popular as a recreation trail for bicyclists. It was built from 1902 to 1904 in connection with the construction of the Bergen Line. The road is mainta ...

goes through the village. The station also features a

navvy Navvy, a clipping of navigator ( UK) or navigational engineer ( US), is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects and occasionally (in North America) to refer to mechanical shovels and eart ...

museum, dedicated to the builders of the railways in Norway. One of Norway's popular hiking trails also starts at the station and ends in the village of

Aurlandsvangen Aurlandsvangen () is the administrative center of Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The village is located on the east side of the Aurlandsfjorden (a branch of the main Sognefjorden) where the Aurlandselvi river flows into the fjord ...

after a four-day trek. Finse station is the only access point to

Hardangerjøkulen Hardangerjøkulen ( en, Hardanger Glacier) is the sixth largest glacier in mainland Norway. It is located in the municipalities of Eidfjord and Ulvik in Vestland county. It is located about northeast of the village of Eidfjord (village), Eidfjo ...

; the glacier is clearly visible from the station area and the village.

History

The station was opened as part of the

Bergen Line The Bergen Line or the Bergen Railway ( no, Bergensbanen or nn, Bergensbana), is a long scenic standard gauge railway line between Bergen and Hønefoss, Norway. The name is often applied for the entire route from Bergen via Drammen to Oslo, ...

on 10 June 1908, five years after the first hotel was built in Finse. Since there is no (public) road access, the railway is the sole access to the area. After the railway came, Finse grew as a recreational area, and also received a small amount of permanent residents, at the most 200 people, including a school and a store. The proximity and easy access to both Bergen and Oslo made Finse a popular mountain resort, but during the 1960s and 1970s the tourist traffic declined, as did the village, and during the 1980s it virtually died when the school and store closed. Finse Station still operates the oldest and highest situated post office in Norway, founded on 1 March 1904.

Paul Armin Due Paul Armin Due (1870–1926) was a Norwegian architect Paul Franz Wilhelm Armin Due was the son the renowned architect Paul Due. He graduated from Leibniz University Hannover in 1896 and spent two years working in Germany before returning to ...

designed the station building in the

jugendstil ''Jugendstil'' ("Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of ...

; originally with one and half

storey A storey (British English) or story (American English) is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US). T ...

s, it soon outgrew the traffic and was extended in length and in height. The second store was then built in wood. There was also two locomotive depots at Finse, used to store the snowplows. The restaurant was taken over by

Norsk Spisevognselskap Norsk Spisevognselskap A/S, often abbreviated NSS or shortened to Spisevognselskapet (Norwegian for "The Dining Car Company"), was a Norwegian state enterprise which operated restaurant carriages on Norwegian trains and restaurants at railway ...

on 1 January 1928. It retained operations until 17 June 1946, when it was privatised. Finse was one of the bases for snow removal on the railway until 1993 when the

opened. At the same time the station, at above mean sea level, became the highest point on the Norwegian railway network.

References

External links

Jernbaneverket entry

Norsk Jernbaneklubb entry

Navvy Museum
{{Authority control Railway stations in Ulvik Railway stations on Bergensbanen Railway stations opened in 1908 1908 establishments in Norway