Lofoten, Senja or Vesterålen: choosing Norway's Arctic islands

Three islands on one coast

Read the map from south to north. Lofoten begins across the Vestfjord from Bodø and runs south-west into the sea as a narrow chain. Vesterålen follows straight on to the north, with no obvious border in the landscape between the two. Senja lies a good deal further north again, west of Tromsø and closer to that city than to either of the others.

On paper that looks like one region. On the ground it behaves like three separate holidays, with three different airports, three different kinds of village and three very different numbers of people at the viewpoints in July. The British comparison we find most useful is the west of Scotland: Lofoten is the island everyone has heard of and half of Britain seems to visit in August, while Vesterålen is closer in spirit to the Outer Hebrides, wider and emptier and slower to give itself up.

Lofoten: the islands that made the photographs

Lofoten is the image most people already have in their heads: red fishermen's cabins on stilts, a harbour full of boats, and a wall of granite rising straight out of the water behind them without any foreshore to speak of. The image is accurate. The difficulty is that it comes with a single road. The E10 is, for most of its length, the only through route from Svolvær to the end of the chain at Å, and in July it carries hire cars, motorhomes and coaches in steady succession. Reine, Hamnøy and Nusfjord are full by the middle of the day.

The self-guided Lofoten cycling week is eight days long, east to west from Svolvær to Reine. Three of those days are spent riding, between 41 and 53 km each, and there is a free day at each main base. Luggage moves between the hotels by vehicle. On the most scenic day a small bicycle ferry crosses the inner sound to Nusfjord, which takes you off the main road for a stretch, and the last two nights are in converted rorbu cabins above the harbour at Reine. The terrain rolls rather than climbs, but there are tunnels to ride and the Atlantic wind can work for you or against you all day.

We offer it in June and from late August into September, and that timing is deliberate. In June you have the midnight sun and noticeably less traffic. From late August the evenings darken again and the coaches thin out. A July week on the E10 means a lot of kilometres in a motorhome's mirrors. For the wider practicalities of visiting, from ferries to where to base yourself, our Lofoten Islands travel guide for British visitors covers the ground.

Senja: a short week, and the outer coast is the reason to go

Senja is the second-largest island in Norway, and it has two faces. The side facing the mainland is soft country, birch woods, farms and hay meadows. The side facing the open sea is the opposite: serrated peaks falling vertically into the water, small fishing settlements tucked into narrow coves, and tunnels and short sharp climbs in between. The National Tourist Route runs along that outer side, and so do the viewpoints that made the island's name, Tungeneset looking across to the spiky Okshornan ridge, the Bergsbotn platform and the beach at Ersfjord.

Our Senja cycling week from Tromsø is six days. You ride out across Kvaløya to the fishing village of Sommarøy, take the ferry from Brensholmen to Botnhamn, and then follow the outer coast to Mefjordvær and on to Hamn i Senja, a restored fishing village on a sheltered cove. There are four riding days of 40 to 62 km, about 200 km in all, and the longest climb is around 200 metres up to the Kattfjordeidet pass on the first riding day. The week finishes at Finnsnes on the mainland side, with a boat back to Tromsø.

Senja has no fixed departures. You choose the week between June and September and the operator confirms it, which suits British travellers working around school terms or a single block of leave. It is the island we suggest to anyone short of days who still wants the wild coast, because the airport is Tromsø and the island is close. The crowds on Senja are real but local: they gather at the viewpoints in the middle of the day and thin out quickly a few kilometres either side.

Vesterålen: quieter, wider, with whales offshore

Vesterålen has the same geology as Lofoten, the same granite and the same closeness to the open sea, with a fraction of the visitors. The landscape is broader. Between the mountains lie bogs and shallow sounds, the villages are smaller and further apart, and evenings in a harbour are spent among people who live there rather than among other visitors. Off the coast of Andøya the continental shelf drops away steeply, which is why whale-watching trips run from Andenes and Stø in summer.

Our Vesterålen cycling week from Sortland is an eight-day loop with five riding days of 30 to 64 km, around 245 km in total, and several route variants on most days so that you can choose by the weather and the legs. The week is built around Nyksund, a fishing village abandoned in the 1970s and slowly brought back to life from the 1980s by people who restored the wooden houses by hand. There is a free day there, and it exists for the Dronningruta, the Queen's Route: around 15 km of coastal ridge path between Nyksund and Stø, with the Lofoten wall on the southern horizon. On the last day an included RIB boat takes you through the inner sounds from Ringstad to Stokmarknes.

For British readers who have already done Lofoten once, this is usually the better second visit. For first-timers who dread crowds more than they want the famous views, it can be the better first one. What you give up is the dense cluster of photogenic villages. What you gain is room.

Light, season and the wind

All three groups of islands sit well north of the Arctic Circle, and all three have the midnight sun in early summer. The further north, the longer it lasts. On Lofoten it runs roughly from late May to mid-July; around Tromsø, and so on Senja, the sun stays up until 25 July. On a cycling week that is more than a photograph: on a calm evening you can simply keep riding, and on a day when the wind gets up in the afternoon you can move the stage into the evening instead.

From late August the nights darken enough for the northern lights. The Lofoten and Senja weeks both run into September, and the last Vesterålen week finishes at the start of September. No week guarantees an aurora, and if the lights are the main reason for the trip, a winter week built around them makes more sense than a cycling holiday. Our week built around the Tromsø polar night is written for exactly that reader.

The factor most British cyclists underestimate is the wind. Senja's outer coast, the western side of Lofoten and the open shore around Bø in Vesterålen all face the Atlantic with nothing in the way. A day into a headwind can cost more than a long climb, rather as a day on the Hebridean machair can. We suggest an e-bike to anyone who does not regularly ride 60 km days, and a little slack in each day's plan.

The walking question

This needs saying clearly, because it is the first thing many British walkers ask. We do not currently book a walking holiday on any of the three. The mountains of Lofoten and Senja are well known for day walks, but many of the popular summits are short, steep, exposed and very busy in summer, and none of the three is set up for the kind of inn-to-inn walking week with luggage moved that you might know from the Coast to Coast or the Dales Way.

There is time on foot within the cycling weeks. In Vesterålen the free day at Nyksund is there specifically for the Dronningruta. On Lofoten and Senja the free days leave room for a shorter walk on your own initiative, chosen to suit the weather. If you are torn between the two ways of seeing the islands, our walk-or-cycle guide for Lofoten weighs the two against each other. If walking is the whole point, our walking holidays in the Norwegian mountains are in Jotunheimen, Rondane and Hardanger rather than on the coast.

All three in one week: Tromsø to Svolvær

If you would rather not choose, you can ride all three in sequence. Our Arctic coast route from Tromsø to Lofoten follows the National Tourist Route and EuroVelo 1 from Tromsø across Kvaløya and Senja, then by ferry from Gryllefjord to Andenes, down the long open coast of Andøya and through Vesterålen to Svolvær. Two ferries join the islands together, Brensholmen to Botnhamn and Gryllefjord to Andenes.

It is a harder week than any of the three single-island trips: six riding days of 41 to 63 km, around 330 km in total, several long days back to back and open coast for much of the way. It suits fit touring cyclists who have done multi-day trips before. The reward is that you feel the differences this article describes in your own legs, an empty Andøya road in the morning and the busy E10 near Svolvær a couple of days later. The full list of our cycling holidays in Norway sits alongside it if you want to compare.

Which island for which traveller

Most of the time the choice comes down to one question: do you want the famous view, or do you want the quiet? Nearly everything else follows from the answer.

• First visit to the Norwegian Arctic and you want the fishing villages you have seen in photographs: Lofoten, in June or from late August.

• A short week and you are happy to fly into Tromsø: Senja, six days with no long transfers.

• Quiet, wildlife and a proper day on foot: Vesterålen, with the free day at Nyksund.

• Fit, experienced, and keen to see the coast as one piece: Tromsø to Svolvær in a week.

• Travelling as a couple with different levels of fitness: Senja or Lofoten, with an e-bike for one of you.

• Still weighing the coast against the high mountains of the south: Lofoten against Jotunheimen and Hardangervidda puts the three regions side by side.