What a Munro-bagger should know about the Norwegian list
Scotland’s 282 Munros are, by some distance, the most carefully curated peak list in the world. Sir Hugh Munro’s 1891 table is revised by the Scottish Mountaineering Club, the qualifying drop is endlessly debated, and the people who finish the round are recorded by name in a register that goes back over a century. The list is, in a real sense, a national institution.
Norway has nothing quite like it - and at the same time, it has rather more than you might expect. The closest equivalent is the collectors’ list of Norwegian summits above two thousand metres, which began as Eivind Røyne’s list of 300 tops and now runs to about 380 with a 10-metre drop, or around 190 with a stricter 50-metre rule. Munro never wrote down a fixed drop at all, and the Norwegian list is the work of a small group of mountain people rather than a national club. There is no formal register of completers. There is no certificate. Collecting is a small hobby rather than a national habit: a Norwegian who has been up Galdhøpiggen ten times will still tell you, slightly puzzled, that it is just a walk.
What Norway does have is a deep, quiet hill-walking culture organised around friluftsliv and the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT), which has around 600 mountain huts across the country (we have written a separate piece on how the DNT hut-to-hut system actually works for the visiting British walker). The walking is taken as seriously as in Scotland, but the framing is different: the day is the point, not the tick. A British walker stepping into this will recognise the rhythm immediately and will need to adjust to one or two things that the Munro round does not prepare you for.
Galdhøpiggen - what it actually involves
Jotunheimen - literally the home of the giants - is the spine of the high Norwegian mountain country, and Galdhøpiggen at 2,469 metres is its high point and the highest summit in mainland Northern Europe. The standard ascent route, used by the great majority of walkers who go to the top, starts from Juvasshytta at 1,840 metres. Juvasshytta is a working mountain lodge with road access from Lom, sometimes described - fairly - as the highest road-accessible hotel in Northern Europe.
The walk from Juvasshytta climbs about 630 metres, and the day takes six to seven hours there and back. The first stretch is straightforward: about 2.8 kilometres of gentle climbing to the edge of the Styggebrean glacier. The crossing that follows, about 50 minutes on the rope, is the part that distinguishes the day from a Munro. The guides divide the party into rope teams and lead it across the glacier, where snow hides the crevasses, and you come out onto the boulder slope of Piggura. The last climb up to the summit hut is on scree, with a pleasingly disproportionate view from the top: the entire Jotunheim plateau to the south, the Smørstabbtindane to the west, the long shoulder of Glittertind to the north-east.
The glacier crossing is non-negotiable from this side. The crevasses are real, the route changes through the summer, and the standard professional advice - which we follow - is that an unguided crossing is not a sensible day out. Juvasshytta's own guides are the only ones who lead the crossing, with one departure a day through the season. The alternative is the longer route from Spiterstulen at 1,100 metres in the Visdalen valley to the east, which avoids the glacier altogether but climbs about 1,450 metres and turns the day into a serious nine hours or so.
On a clear day in the high season the summit can be busy, which surprises British walkers used to a quieter Highland top. On a poor day, with cloud down on the glacier and a fresh wind across the upper ridge, you may be the only party on the mountain. The weather window matters more here than the calendar.
Glittertind - the silent rival
If Galdhøpiggen is the headline summit, Glittertind is the quieter rival a short distance to the north-east. At 2,452 metres on bare rock - or up to 2,481 metres in the years when its summit ice cap was thick enough to count (by summer 2024 it had melted away), a piece of nineteenth-century cartographic etiquette that occasionally still makes the Norwegian press - it has been variously described as the highest or the second-highest mountain in the country, depending on the season and on which decade you read.
The walk to the top from Spiterstulen, which is the standard approach, is around 19 kilometres return with roughly 1,400 metres of ascent and about nine hours on the move: longer than the standard Galdhøpiggen day, but on a single ridge line with no glacier and no roped crossing. The summit ridge is broad, and the view across to Galdhøpiggen and the rest of the Jotunheim plateau is, if anything, more open than from Galdhøpiggen itself.
What you trade is the company. On Glittertind you set your own start time and pace, with no glacier rope to join; on the standard Galdhøpiggen route you walk in the guides' rope teams, and in the Norwegian summer holiday those can be full. For a British walker who has done the Coast to Coast or the Cape Wrath Trail and is looking for a single high Norwegian day done quietly, Glittertind is often the better choice. If it is the long line rather than the summit you are after, the Norwegian equivalent of the Coast to Coast is the question worth asking next.
Other tops worth knowing about
Outside the two best-known summits, three more are worth a British walker’s attention.
- Snøhetta (2,286 m), Dovrefjell
The high point of the Dovrefjell plateau, north of Jotunheimen on the long inland route between Oslo and Trondheim. The standard route from Snøheim is about 12 kilometres return with around 815 metres of ascent - a steady five-hour day, not a technical one. Dovrefjell is home to the country’s only wild musk-ox herd, descended from animals brought over from Greenland in 1947-53, and the plateau approach is one of the more dramatic walks in the country. A reasonable comparison, in feel rather than in scale, is the long approach across the Cairngorm plateau to Ben Macdui.
- Surtningssue (2,368 m), Jotunheimen
One of the higher Jotunheim summits and almost completely unknown to the international walker. Approached from Memurubu on the shore of Lake Gjende - the lake the famous Besseggen ridge runs above - the day is around 20 kilometres return with about 1,500 metres of ascent, nine to ten hours on the move. It is long and physically hard, but the usual route is waymarked all the way and crosses no exposed ridges, which makes it one of the technically easier two-thousanders in the range. No glacier, no rope, and on most days you will have the summit to yourself.
- Kyrkja (2,032 m), Jotunheimen
The steeple-shaped two-thousander behind Leirvassbu on the western side of the range, often used as a warm-up day before the higher route. The walk from the lodge is around 9 kilometres, with an exposed last stretch to the top and a long view across Jotunheimen; the path up to the Storbrean glacier is the gentler alternative. A useful first day in the range while the body adjusts to the altitude and the daylight.
How a Norwegian day differs from a Munro day
A few things will catch a British walker out, and they are worth saying plainly.
The weather is colder for the same calendar date. Galdhøpiggen's summit is more than 1,100 metres higher than Ben Nevis and nearly five degrees of latitude further north, and Juvasshytta's kit list for its summer crossings starts from its spring-and-autumn list - wool next to the skin, a fleece, a warm layer for the stops - and adds shorts and light gloves. The right kit for the Munros in May is the right kit for the Jotunheim peaks in July.
The waymarking is far lighter. The DNT marks its mountain routes with small cairns, some of them painted with a red T, and puts signposts at the junctions - and that is essentially the entire signage system on the ground. There are no path-of-the-month boards. A British walker used to the well-trodden Munro paths will find Norwegian routes harder to read in poor visibility, and the standard advice in the mountain code of the DNT and the Norwegian Red Cross (Fjellvettreglene, nine rules in all) is to carry a map, a compass, and the ability to use both.
The daylight is much longer. In July you have effectively eighteen hours of usable light at the latitude of Jotunheimen, and a serious twenty-four hours of light by the time you reach Lofoten. This changes the day fundamentally. A late start is a perfectly reasonable choice; a slow lunch on the summit ridge does not commit you to a head-torch descent.
The infrastructure is more generous. Through the high season the DNT hut network means you can walk for a week through Jotunheimen without carrying camping kit, sleeping in staffed lodges with a three-course evening meal and a packed lunch ready in the morning. The British equivalent - a week on the Cape Wrath Trail with bothies and rationed shop stops - is a noticeably more austere proposition. The flip side is that the Norwegian huts get genuinely full in the high summer: book ahead.
Public transport works. In summer the Valdresekspressen bus runs from Oslo to Beitostølen in under four hours and on past Bygdin to Gjendesheim; Spiterstulen and Juvasshytta are a local bus ride from Lom. A car is convenient but not necessary. A British walker used to the slow rhythm of getting to the western Highlands by train and ferry will find Norwegian access surprisingly straightforward.
When to go
The Norwegian high season for the two-thousanders is short and well-defined - we have written separately on the best season for walking in Norway for the walker still weighing dates. Galdhøpiggen with its glacier crossing is guided from Juvasshytta through a set season, 30 May to 13 September in 2026, with mid-July to mid-August as the safest stretch. Outside that window there is no guided crossing, and the day turns from a robust hill walk into a serious Alpine outing.
Within the season, there is a real difference between the two halves. Mid-July to mid-August is the warmest, busiest, and most reliable; late August to mid-September is cooler, quieter, and the autumn light on the high plateaus is, frankly, the better aesthetic. Pack for winter at the top whichever half you choose: both summits stand above 2,450 metres, snow commonly lies on their upper slopes right through the summer, and a fresh dusting in August is normal, especially on Glittertind. A British walker willing to accept a slightly higher chance of an early snow shower will find the late-season window the more rewarding one, though it falls after the last start date of the lodge-to-lodge week we recommend.
Juvasshytta warns that its guided crossings can be full in the Norwegian summer holiday, the fellesferie, which usually takes the last three full weeks of July. If the date is flexible at all, a midweek day outside those weeks is worth the planning effort.
Planning Galdhøpiggen and the wider Jotunheim week
The case for stitching Jotunheimen into a wider Norwegian week, rather than treating it as a single objective, is set out in our Wainwright-and-Jotunheimen essay and in the regional comparison between Lofoten, Jotunheimen and Hardangervidda. We do not currently sell a Jotunheimen week built around the Galdhøpiggen day.
For a walker arranging this independently, the standard advice is to base yourself at Juvasshytta itself or at the Lom valley hotels for the night before, book one of Juvasshytta’s guided crossings in advance (tickets are sold up to the evening before), and allow at least two clear days in the area in case the weather closes the standard route on the first attempt. The DNT website (ut.no) is the single best Norwegian source for current trail conditions and hut bookings.
Common questions
Is Galdhøpiggen technically harder than a Scottish Munro?
On the standard Juvasshytta route, the walking grade is comparable to a long Munro day: a gentle climb of about 2.8 kilometres to the glacier edge and, after the crossing, a steep last stretch over coarse boulders to the top. The glacier crossing in the middle adds a technical element that no Munro requires: roped travel across an active glacier with crevasses. With a guide, the crossing is straightforward for any fit walker. Without one, it is not advisable. The longer Spiterstulen route avoids the glacier and is closer in feel to a long Cairngorm day.
How does Galdhøpiggen compare to Ben Nevis?
Galdhøpiggen is around 1,124 metres higher than Ben Nevis (2,469 m versus 1,345 m), and the standard ascent involves a glacier crossing that the Ben Nevis tourist path does not. The day is longer, colder for the same calendar date, and at altitude high enough that some walkers feel it. In feel it is closer to a long Alpine day than to a Highland day. A walker comfortable with the long route up Ben Nevis is well prepared for the walking element of Galdhøpiggen, but should treat the glacier as a separate skill.
Do I need a guide for Galdhøpiggen?
For the standard Juvasshytta route, yes. The route crosses the Styggebrean glacier and the crevasse field shifts through the season; the standard professional advice is that the crossing should be done with a roped party led by a qualified guide. Juvasshytta, the only provider of the guided crossing, runs scheduled groups through the season at a fixed price. For the longer Spiterstulen route on the eastern side, no glacier is involved and a competent self-guided walker can do the day on their own with a good map.
Is Glittertind really lower than Galdhøpiggen?
On the bare rock, yes - 2,452 metres against 2,469 metres. With its summer ice cap, Glittertind measured 2,481 metres in 1931 and about 2,465 metres in 2000, and through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was sometimes claimed as the higher of the two. Modern surveys settle the question in favour of Galdhøpiggen, but the cultural debate quietly continues.
How many two-thousanders are there in Norway?
There is no single canonical list in the Munro sense, but the working reference is the set of Norwegian peaks above 2,000 metres - around 380 summits in mainland Norway with a topographic prominence of at least 10 metres, or about 190 with a stricter 50-metre prominence rule. By comparison, Scotland has 282 Munros above 914 metres (3,000 ft). The two lists are not directly comparable: a Norwegian 2,000-metre summit is a much bigger walking day than the average Munro, and almost all of them are concentrated in Jotunheimen rather than spread across the country.
When is the best month to walk Galdhøpiggen?
Mid-July to mid-August is the most reliable window, with the warmest weather and the longest run of clear days. Late August to mid-September is cooler, quieter and aesthetically the better season, with autumn colour on the lower slopes and stronger light on the upper plateau. Outside Juvasshytta's guided season, which in 2026 ran from 30 May to 13 September, there is no guided crossing of the glacier.
Can I combine Galdhøpiggen with a longer Norwegian walking trip?
Yes - and we usually recommend that as the better way for a British walker to spend the time. Galdhøpiggen works best as a high day inside a longer stay in the area rather than as a single summit day. We do not currently sell a Jotunheimen week, so send us your dates and the kind of walking you want, and we will say plainly what an operator can arrange.
