Jotunheimen: Hiking Guide to Norway’s Home of the Giants

SummitClimbs Field Note: Jotunheimen, “the home of the giants”, is a mountain area of roughly 3,500 km² in southern Norway, straddling Innlandet and Vestland, and it holds the 29 highest mountains in Norway, including Galdhøpiggen (2,469 m), the highest in Northern Europe. Its heart is Jotunheimen National Park (1,151 km², 1980), with more than 250 peaks above 1,900 m. The Norwegian Trekking Association runs a dense network of lodges and more than 50 marked trails, which makes it one of the best-developed hiking areas in Europe.

The Home of the Giants

There was originally no single name for these mountains. In 1820 the geologist Baltazar Mathias Keilhau proposed Jotunfjeldene, “the mountains of the giants”, inspired by the German Riesengebirge, and in 1862 the poet Aasmund Olavsson Vinje changed it to Jotunheimen, after Jötunheimr in Norse mythology. Vinje’s memorial stands at Eidsbugarden at the western end of Bygdin.

Jotunheimen is a residual mountain area, left standing as the land around it eroded, and its peaks were sculpted by Pleistocene glaciers; some summits, such as Galdhøpiggen and Glittertind, stood above the ice as nunataks. The west is maritime and wet, with glaciers forming below 1,500 m, while the drier east has few glaciers and widespread permafrost. Wildlife includes reindeer, moose, red deer, lynx and wolverine, and most lakes and rivers hold trout.

Jotunheimen at a Glance

• Area: about 3,500 km²; national park 1,151 km² (established 1980)
• Counties: Innlandet and Vestland
• Highest peaks: Galdhøpiggen 2,469 m, Glittertind 2,452 m, Store Skagastølstind 2,405 m
• Peaks over 1,900 m: more than 250 in the national park
• Trails: more than 50 marked DNT trails, from short hikes to multi-day routes
• Roads: the Sognefjellsvegen national tourist route (Skjolden–Lom) and Rv 51 over Valdresflya (Gol–Vågåmo); the park itself is practically roadless
• First DNT hut: by Lake Tyin, 1869

Where to Hike in Jotunheimen

Our guides to individual Jotunheimen summits and hikes:

• Galdhøpiggen (2,469 m): Norway’s highest, from Juvasshytta or Spiterstulen
• Glittertind (2,452 m): the second highest, from Glitterheim or Spiterstulen
• Store Skagastølstind (2,405 m): the climber’s summit in Hurrungane
• Besseggen and Besshøe (2,258 m) above Gjende
• Tjørnholstind (2,331 m), a twin-summit ridge
• Falketind, Midtre Tverråtinden, Mjølkedalstind and Bitihorn
• The full list: Norway’s 12 highest mountains

People in the Mountains

Jotunheimen has been hunted since prehistoric times: Stone Age hunting camps have been found by Gjende and Russvatnet, and the high pastures have been used as summer farms for at least a thousand years. In August 2006 the “Jotunheimen shoe” was found, a leather shoe made between 1800 and 1100 BC, the oldest piece of clothing found in Scandinavia, and in 2020 melting ice revealed a 1,500-year-old iron arrowhead with its shaft and feather. Mountaineering here was pioneered in the late 1800s and early 1900s by climbers such as William Cecil Slingsby, whose 1904 book Norway, the Northern Playground made Jotunheimen famous internationally, and Norwegians such as Kristian Tandberg, George Paus and Therese Bertheau. In Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1867), Peer’s wild reindeer ride takes place along “the Gjendin ridge”.

The SummitClimbs Take

Jotunheimen is the heart of Norwegian mountain hiking: the highest peaks, the best hut network and trails for every level. Start with Besseggen or Galdhøpiggen from Spiterstulen, then work up to the glaciers and Hurrungane.

Facts from Wikipedia (Jotunheimen) and Jotunheimen National Park.