Mundal
Mundal sits at the end of Fjærlandsfjorden with roughly 300 residents and an estimated 150,000 books — more volumes than people by a factor that takes a moment to absorb. Second-hand paperbacks spill out of old wooden sheds, a roadside book stand operates on the honour system, and the total shelf run stretches to about four kilometres. This is Norway's first book town, opened in 1996, and it occupies a village that until 1986 could only be reached by boat.
Above the rooftops, the glacier arms Bøyabreen and Supphellebreen — fingers of the vast Jostedalsbreen ice sheet — slide down the mountainside at up to two metres per day. The 1891 Hotel Mundal, a yellow wooden building that has been receiving guests for well over a century, anchors the centre of the village.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to mention the roadside book stand first — the one where you take what you want and leave coins in a tin. Inkåleisn Kafé, in the heart of the book town, is where you end up after a glacier walk. And the floating sauna on the fjord, run by Fjærland Guiding, is the kind of thing you don't book until you're already there and then wish you'd booked sooner.
Deals in Mundal
Book directly at the providerHow Mundal came to be
People have lived in this valley since the late Stone Age, and Norse settlement continued through the Viking Age. Administratively, the area moved between municipalities more than once: it was part of Leikanger until 1849, then transferred to the newly formed Balestrand Municipality. For most of its modern history, Fjærland was accessible only by boat on the fjord — a degree of isolation that shaped its character.
The road north to Skei opened in 1986, followed by the southern connection to Sogndal in 1994, after the completion of the Frudal Tunnel prompted Fjærland to merge into Sogndal Municipality on 1 January 2000. Hotel Mundal, built in 1891 by Olaus Dahle and the Mundal siblings, predates all of that road-building by nearly a century. The family of Walter Mondale — US Vice President 1977–1981 and the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee — originated here; his paternal grandparents were born in Mundal, and Mondale himself returned in 1986 to open the tunnel road.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
May through September brings the warmest days, typically 15–25°C, long light and the best access to glacier walks and kayak tours. The west coast draws more rain than Norway's interior, so pack a layer even in July.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.