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Unless you're on a packaged tour, a trip to Norway will involve a good deal of planning and decision-making so you'll want to buy a book and/or map to aid in your trip planning and navigation throughout the country. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of literature out there outside the general guides.
Nonetheless, below are books and maps that we've used. We've also included other books in the literature that may help you find what you need. The list is by no means complete, but hopefully it is enough to get you going on your quest to inform yourself on your travels. Books
Norway (Lonely Planet): We've been fans of Lonely Planet guidebooks for their thoroughness and organization. They make for great resources when you're just starting out your trip planning, figuring out which local restaurants to go to, studying detailed maps, and even finding budget accommodations. I also like their writeups on culture, the environment, politics, and history. For the case of Norway, we used a pretty old 2002 version but it was still mostly relevant for our trip. I relied on it heavily for pre-trip planning, but once we got there, it had limited use.
The Rough Guide to Norway (Rough Guides): I've learned that when it comes to travelers, you tend to have Lonely Planet loyalists and Rough Guides loyalists. I have to admit that both Julie and I are LP loyalists, but in the case of Norway, I consulted with this title to supplement my research given the somewhat limited success with the old LP version of Norway. I didn't find it as thorough as the LP guide, and they didn't really say a whole lot about waterfalls, but it did help me nonetheless by reinforcing much of what I had researched previously.
Adventure Roads in Norway (Nortrabooks): This excellent english-translated, full color, hard-cover book by Erling Welle-Strand provided lots of information not found in the Lonely Planet books or other generalized guides on Norway (certainly not any of the literature we could obtain in the States nor readily online). Best of all, they cover some waterfalls I haven't heard of, many of which are accessible, as well as other major attractions throughout the country. Certainly a gem of a book we picked up while in one of the Visitor Centers in Norway. I highly doubt you'll find this one in a retailer outside Norway.
Top 50 Attractions in Norway (Terra Scope): This is a pocket-sized, full color, hard-cover book running through the major attractions in the country. Many of these attractions are waterfalls, but they also pick at other not-to-be-missed attractions throughout the country. Certainly visiting the majority of these attractions is something we're shooting for when we return to Norway.
Engelsk (Kunnskapsforlaget): This is a pocket-sized English-Norwegian and vice versa dictionary. It has about 33,000 translations of pretty useful words. I found myself making use of this dictionary after the trip. That's because during the trip, I picked up this book at a local bookstore in Northern Norway late into our trip. Pretty reasonably priced book at about 159 kr, which at the time was around $23 USD.
Norwegian (Teach Yourself): This is a tremendously fun and useful language book and 2-CD combination. I think Margaretha Danbolt Simons seamlessly mixed meaningful contextual conversations (with a bit of interesting soap-opera-like drama) into this fun lesson. It was too bad I didn't use this book until after our trip (because I didn't know about it!). It would've been far more useful than the crap I got from the expensive Pimsleur CDs, which I tried to learn from prior to the trip. While most language lessons are dry and boring, this one actually got me wanting to learn the conversations to see how the story of Bente and John play out. My only gripe was that the CDs didn't seem complete towards the end. If they could finish off all the conversations, I think this would be by far the best passive-learning Norwegian tool (i.e. without having a Norwegian friend or living in Norway) you could buy. But even with the edition we had bought (we used it in 2005, but they have since come out with a 2007 edition, which I haven't checked out yet), it was my favorite of all the Teach Yourself lessons as well as other audio lessons I've bought so far.
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Maps
Norge (Mapsource): This is a 1:250k topographic map of the entire country of Norway. While it has all the features you'd expect from Mapsource regarding GPS compatibility and overlay manipulation, we ran into bad luck on our trip when both of our USB ports on our laptop died thereby rendering this software useless during our trip. Bummer! Thus, I can't really say much more about how this performs while in the field. We ended up buying this product from a local GPS shop in Oslo as we couldn't get our hands on it prior to our trip. We'll have to try this product on our next trip to Norway.
Norgesglasset (Statens Kartverk): This is a free website that you could browse. Once you know the place names you're looking for (like waterfalls), you can find out where it is on the map. Of course, you'll have to make use of wildcards unless you figure out a way to put in the Norwegian vowels in the search engine for certain place names. It's hard to believe how much detail they have on the maps and I think it goes down to 1:50k scale. I only wish they had the whole Statens Kartverk database contained in this online map on CD. I think that would be certainly a product worth purchasing! Too bad they don't have one and the closest thing they have is Opplev Norge, which as I explain below, doesn't come close to the online version.
Another thing about Norgesglasset is that they do have options to translate the interface into English. The only big problem with this online interface (which is why I wish they had a CD of this) is that it's prone to crapping out where basically nothing works in the search engine and you'll have to wait for a while for the tool to reset itself. An additional problem is the netlag for awaiting the loading of the maps.
Opplev Norge! (Statens Kartverk): This 1:300k digital road atlas has a look and feel similar to the awesome Norgesglasset online map, but its interface is very klunky and it lacks all the detail and place name databasing of Norgesglasset. It's also completely in Norwegian and despite my best efforts at learning Norwegian, it was too difficult for me to use effectively. I wouldn't recommend this for foreigners.
Veiatlas Norge (Statens Kartverk): This 1:300k spiral-bound road atlas with 1:20k scale for city maps was basically the lifesaver for our Norway trip after both of our USB ports on our laptop crapped out. It's basically the best road atlas out there for Norway as it provides road distances, good cross references, good indexing, and they even point out locations of major waterfalls! We're definitely bringing this book along for our second trip to Norway even if the GPS navigation scheme works. I only wished we were able to purchase this atlas before our trip to Norway instead of 1 week into it!
Norge - Veiatlas & Feriehåndbok (Folia): This is another 1:300k road atlas with text in Norwegian discussing the various attractions and tidbits about the country. It was the first such atlas we saw in Oslo, which was why we bought it as we were desperate to get some kind of navigation literature for our trip. It's not as good as the more direct Statens Kartverk Road Atlas, but it was adequate for our trip up until we started using the better road atlas.
Paper Topographic Maps (Statens Kartverk): We bought numerous paper topographic maps (either the Tur Kart Series or Topografisk Hovedkartserie) whenever we had the chance at any Visitor Centers or bookstores we visited who had such maps in stock. At an average of 150 kr (about $21 USD at the time) per copy, it wasn't cheap, but it was necessary as our digital scheme let us down.
Veikart Norge (Statens Kartverk): We bought this 1:1M scale paper map prior to our trip from a US-based map dealer in North Carolina, which was the only Norwegian map they had in stock in time for our trip. Otherwise, it was hard to find a decent SK map outside of Norway. In any case, I studied this map extensively and put markers on it as well as routes to help us through the trip. It was quite crude, but it was effective given the circumstances. In fact, this map had gotten so much usage, that we literally fatigued the map with holes at the creases. This map got less usage once we finally picked up the Veiatlas Norge Road Atlas.
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