Scuba diving Norway, with orcas

Diving holidays and stays in Norway, with orcas

Fancy some unspoiled open spaces? Fly to Norway, a Scandinavian country shaped by mountains, glaciers, and fjords. Take a trip to the capital, Oslo, to catch the Viking spirit in the museums and admire their ships! Then take a look at Bergen and its pretty, colorful wooden houses. Cruise ships leave from here to explore the Sognefjord, Europe's longest fjord. Norway is also popular for hiking, skiing, and for what you can see underwater! Bordered by the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, Norway's coastline stretches for 2,500 kilometers, carved out by fjords - inlets of the sea that run for miles into the land, with steep slopes plunging into the cold water.

Diving in Norway does not scare you if you are equipped with a dry suit! Snorkel with orcas in the fjords, discover a sunken village in Lake Lygnstøylsvatnet, see magnificent shipwrecks from the last war and see the abundance of fish in the world's most powerful tidal current. Every winter, from November to February, in the Troms and Finnmark area, the world's largest concentration of killer whales swim up the fjords to feed on the herring beds. Watch them snorkel on day trips and mini cruises. From June to August, walk along the paths lined with petrified trees and the ruins of houses that were swallowed up by the waters in 1908 when a landslide flooded the valley at Lygnstoylsvatnet.

The history of Norway is within reach of your flippers! Near Gulen and Narvik, shipwrecks from the Second World War litter the seabed. For wreck lovers, there is a vast playground amidst the kelp forests, with German destroyers such as Wilhelm Heidkampf, Georg Thiele, Bernd von Arnim, Hermann Künne as well as other types of ships such as the ORP Grom, PS Norge, Strassa and Odin, covered in anemones. Take a memorable cruise to Spitsbergen, an island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where you will see polar bears, blue whales, humpback whales, right whales, seals, orcas, beluga whales, and sperm whales.

Try the incredible experience of diving in the three-kilometer long and 150-meter wide Saltstraumen between Straumøya and Knaplundsøya islands. The tidal currents here are among the strongest in the world at 40 km/h, and the eddies are up to ten meters in diameter and five meters deep. But at slack water, boats can pass through unhindered. Many fish are concentrated here, such as saithe, cod, sea bass, redfish, halibut, and monkfish. Also discover a small shark in danger of extinction, spotted Anguillat, Squalus acanthias, also called the spiny shark, which migrates in Norwegian waters from October to February. Arctic salmon, a favorite food of seals, happily maraud in our evolutionary depths. Lovers of macrofauna will be delighted by at least 90 different species.