Ferries from Solvorn ferjekai

A small ferry from this village crosses to Ornes 12 times a timetable, and at the other end stands a church built in the 1130s — the oldest of Norway's stave churches, on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979, and the building that gave the last great style of Viking art its name.

The crossing

Solvorn to Ornes takes about 20 minutes across the Lustrafjord, with 12 sailings in our timetable and 26 across the quay in both directions. Operated by Skyss.

⚠ Two places called Ørnes, 900 km apart

The Ornes on this crossing is in Luster, on the Sognefjord. There is a separate Ørnes in Meløy, Nordland, and our data holds both against the same record — which is why that page lists a Nordland county ferry and this Sognefjord crossing side by side.

If a search result puts this ferry near a glacier in the Arctic, it has found the wrong one.

Urnes

Dendrochronology dates the felling of the timber to the winter of 1131–32, and the oldest dated log in the building began growing in 765. Some of the carving was reused from an earlier church on the site.

The interlaced animals on the north portal are so distinctive that art historians named a whole period after them: the Urnes style, the final phase of Viking Age art.

Timing the visit

Twelve sailings is enough to make a half day work without planning it to the minute, but the church has its own opening hours and they are shorter than the boat's. Check those first and work backwards.

Solvorn itself

A cluster of white wooden houses on a small bay, with a hotel that has been taking guests since the nineteenth century and orchards behind. It is a detour off the main road up the Lustrafjord and quieter than the fjord's better-known villages.

Nearby

The Nigardsbreen arm of the Jostedalsbreen glacier is about an hour up the valley, and Sogndal roughly half an hour back down the fjord.