Four hundred square kilometres of forest at the end of the metro, with a legal right to walk anywhere in it.
The single most important fact about Oslo is not in the city at all. Roughly two-thirds of the municipality is protected forest and water, and you get to it on the metro.
Oslomarka — the Marka — surrounds the city on three sides. Nordmarka, the northern part, is about 430 square kilometres of forest, lakes and low hills, and it is protected by its own law, the Markaloven of 2009, which effectively forbids building in it.
Allemannsretten
Norway’s right to roam is a legal right, not a custom, and it is worth understanding because it changes what is possible.
You may walk, ski, cycle, ride, swim and camp on uncultivated land, whoever owns it. You may pick berries, mushrooms and wildflowers. You may pitch a tent for up to two nights anywhere at least 150 metres from a house or cabin, and longer in the mountains and remote areas.
In exchange you leave no trace, close gates, and do not light fires in or near woodland between 15 April and 15 September, when there is a general open-fire ban.
That is the whole arrangement, and Norwegians take both halves of it seriously.
Getting in
T-bane line 5 to Sognsvann. Twenty minutes from the centre. A lake with a level 3.3 km path around it, sandy spots to swim from, and marked trails leading north into the forest. This is the effortless option and it is what most Oslo residents do on a Tuesday evening.
T-bane line 1 to Frognerseteren. The line climbs to 469 metres. There is a wooden lodge from 1891 serving rømmegrøt and a well-known apple cake, a view over the whole fjord, and trails in every direction. In winter the sledge run down to Midtstuen is a genuine institution — hire a kjelke at the top, sled down, take the metro back up, repeat.
Maridalsvannet, Oslo’s drinking water reservoir, north of the city. No swimming, no boats — this is enforced and it is the city’s water supply.
Winter
The Marka has around 2,600 kilometres of prepared cross-country trails, of which about 90 kilometres are floodlit.
You can be on a lit ski trail twenty-five minutes after leaving a hotel in the centre. Equipment hire is available at Frognerseteren and elsewhere, and there are beginners’ tracks.
This is the single best thing about Oslo in winter and it is the reason the city tolerates the dark.
The cabins
The DNT — the Norwegian Trekking Association — maintains a network of serviced and self-service cabins throughout the Marka and across the country.
Several in Nordmarka are within a few hours’ walk. Self-service cabins are stocked with food and firewood; you take what you need, write it in the book and pay afterwards. Membership makes them much cheaper.
Kikutstua, Kobberhaughytta and others are walkable from Sognsvann or Frognerseteren.
Practical
Free. Standard Ruter transport tickets cover the metro to every trailhead.
Take a map. Phone signal is patchy and the forest is genuinely large; people do get lost in it.
Boots and a layer in any season. Ticks are present in summer.
Water in the lakes and streams is generally drinkable in the upper Marka, and Norwegians do drink it — but not from Maridalsvannet, and not downstream of a cabin.
