Ferries from Stokkvågen ferjekai

Every 14 April, roughly two hundred thousand puffins come back to Lovund. The islanders call it Lundkommardagen and treat it as the first day of summer. Stokkvågen is the mainland quay the boats leave from.

Where the boats go

• Onøy — about 40 minutes, 14 sailings.
• Lovund — about 85 minutes, 2 sailings.
• Træna — about 2 hours, 2 sailings.

35 active sailings, operated by Nordland fylkeskommune. A Selvær route is listed but holds no active departures in our data.

⚠ Two sailings to Lovund is the whole service

The car ferry out to Lovund and Træna runs a couple of times, not a couple of times an hour. Express boats supplement it on some days from Nesna and Sandnessjøen, on different timetables.

Work out the return before you go. These are open-sea crossings and weather cancels them.

Lundkommardagen

The puffins return on the same date with striking reliability, and the island marks it. Around 200,000 birds spend the summer on Lovund's Lovundfjellet, and the evening arrival — thousands of birds coming in off the sea at once — is the reason people make the crossing in April rather than July.

Watching is done from a distance and from marked ground. The colony is the island's asset and it is treated as one.

Lovund itself

A small island dominated by a single steep mountain, with a salmon industry that has made it unusually prosperous for its size and a population that has grown rather than shrunk. It is not a depopulated outpost.

Practicalities

County ferry rules — no booking, arrival order, AutoPASS by plate — but on a route with two sailings, arriving early is not optional in summer.