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Malselvfossen (Målselvfossen; "MOHLS-elv-foss-un") was once considered Norway's national waterfall. I'm still a little unclear why this was so, but maybe it might be because it historically produced large yields of salmon. I believe this place still is a popular fishing spot. As a matter of fact, we noticed a lot of infrastructure around the falls such as the large car park, the well-positioned signs off the E6, and even the presence of fish and tackle supply shops to attest to this being a major fishing spot. Despite the infrastructure around this waterfall, I would say from a photographic and scenic standpoint that this falls is really more of a bunch of rapids than a waterfall (it's said that it's 22m high but 650m long). Still, it's worth a look to see both the scenery and even the salmon ladder on the near side of the banks of the falls. From the large car park (see directions below), there was a well-used path that we followed alongside the Mål River ultimately ending alongside Malselvfossen. Even though we already started to see the falls in its context near the start of the walk, I reckoned we had a better look closeup along this walk. Besides, we even saw closeup the salmon ladder bypassing this waterfall and rapids. It took us no more than 15 minutes to both walk to and view the falls. Directions: The nearest township is Andselv, which also has its own neighbouring river waterfall called Bardufossen (which we missed). We headed north on the E6 and about 8km before Andselv, we turned right onto Rv87. Once on the Rv87 (whose turnoff was also signposted for the falls), we followed it to a three-way intersection. Turning right to remain on Rv87, there was another sign directing us to turn left at the next turnoff. When we saw this turnoff, we took it for a few minutes to the car park. Just to get a sense of the geography here, the neighbouring towns or cities to Andselv are Bardufoss (19km south along E6 from the Rv87 turnoff), Narvik (102km south along E6 from the Rv87 turnoff), and Tromsø (137km north of Andselv along both the E6 and E8).
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Near the large car park
Contextual look at Malselvfossen from near the car park
Looking downstream from the falls with slight rainbow
More frontal and closer view of the falls. I think the wooden thing on the lower left might be part of the salmon ladder.
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TRIP REPORTSFor more information about our experiences with this waterfall, check out the following travel stories.
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