Key takeaways
- The fall comes down a broad rock face in a series of steps rather than one plunge, which is why it looks wider and whiter than its height alone would suggest.
- It sits a few metres off the main road east of Voss, so the walk from the vehicle to the foot of it takes a minute rather than a hike.
- One of the three admissions covered by the tour fare, along with the Stegastein Lookout and the Naeroyfjord cruise.
- Long enough to walk to the base, get closer than is sensible, take photographs and walk back with wet hair if you wanted to.
What you are looking at
Tvindefossen drops around a hundred and ten metres down a broad, stepped rock face in the valley north of Voss. It is not a single vertical plunge like the famous narrow falls further north; the water spreads across the width of the rock and comes down in a sequence of terraces, which is why photographs of it look like a white sheet rather than a white column.
That geometry is the reason it photographs so well and the reason it is louder than its height suggests. A stepped fall breaks the water repeatedly, so more of it is airborne and white at any moment, and the noise is spread rather than concentrated.
It is fed by the Kroelvi, and it runs all year, though the volume changes enormously between the spring melt and late summer. Nobody has ever arrived to find it dry.
Why every tour stops here
Geography, mostly. The road east from Bergen towards the Sognefjord passes directly beneath it, at a point roughly a third of the way through a long drive, and there is a parking area at the foot. A stop that requires no detour, no walk and no climb is a stop every operator on the route will make.
It also arrives at the right moment. By the time a vehicle that left Bergen at eight reaches Tvindefossen, everybody on board has been sitting for a while and is ready to be somewhere. A waterfall is a better answer to that than a service station.
The consequence is that you will not be alone. Several tours are working this road at similar times, and the parking area at ten in the morning in July has vehicles in it. Half an hour is still enough for the place to feel like a waterfall rather than a queue.
Water coming down a broad stepped face a minute's walk from the road
What half an hour actually gets you
The walk from the parking area to the base of the fall takes a minute or two on a made path. From there you can get considerably closer than most people expect, close enough that spray reaches you on a windy day and close enough that conversation stops working.
That proximity is the point of the stop. A great many waterfalls in Norway are viewed from a layby a kilometre away; this is one you can stand at the bottom of. People consistently describe getting wet as the thing they remember, which tells you how close close is.
There is a souvenir shop and there are facilities. Food and drink are not included on this tour at any stop, so if you want a coffee this is one of your two or three opportunities in eleven hours.
When it is at its best
May and June, with the snowmelt coming off the high ground, is when the volume peaks and the fall is at its widest and most violent. This is also the point at which standing near the base becomes a genuinely wet proposition rather than an occasional splash.
By August the flow has typically dropped a good deal and the character changes: more rock visible between the strands, a quieter sound, easier photography. Neither version is better, but they are noticeably different and the first surprises people more.
In winter the edges freeze and the fall runs through a shell of ice, which is a genuinely striking thing to see and one of the arguments for taking this tour outside the obvious months.
110 m
A hundred and ten metres, falling in terraces rather than one drop, which is why it reads as a white sheet across the rock instead of a column.
Photographing it
The difficulty is the same as with any tall waterfall on a bright day: the white water is many stops brighter than the dark wet rock beside it, and a phone will decide to expose for one or the other. Shooting on an overcast day is considerably easier, and overcast is common here.
The other difficulty is scale. A photograph of a hundred and ten metres of falling water with nothing else in it reads as small. Putting a person in the frame at the base is the only reliable fix, and there will be no shortage of volunteers.
Keep the lens dry, which is harder advice than it sounds, because you will want to be close and close is exactly where the spray is. A cloth in a pocket solves the problem that otherwise ruins every photograph taken after the first two minutes.
Is it worth the time
On its own, Tvindefossen would not be a reason to drive east from Bergen. As the first stop on an eleven hour day it is well placed and genuinely good: an easy walk to something big and loud, half an hour after the sitting has started to register.
The people who are least impressed are usually the ones who have already seen the taller falls of the western fjords and are measuring this against them. The people who are most impressed are the ones who have never stood at the bottom of anything like it.
Either way the admission is already paid as part of the tour, and the alternative use of the half hour is sitting in a vehicle. It earns its place in the itinerary comfortably.
