Horten, Norway Travel Guide

Horten is a town of about 27,700 people on a peninsula on the western shore of the outer Oslofjord, in Vestfold, in eastern Norway. This is not fjord-and-mountain Norway. It is fjord-mouth Norway: low, wooded, agricultural, and close enough to the capital to be a day trip. What it is, is the place the Royal Norwegian Navy called home for a century and a half, which left behind a walkable naval base full of museums, and a stretch of coast that Edvard Munch painted for seven summers running. Vestfold gets marketed as Eastern Norway’s “sunshine coast,” a claim that carries more weight at this latitude than it would anywhere else in Europe.

1. Where Horten Actually Is

The municipality covers 71 square kilometres, roughly half of it forest and slightly under a third agricultural land. It borders Tønsberg to the south and west and Holmestrand to the north. Inside its boundaries you get:

• Horten: the town and the administrative centre, with the harbour and the ferry quay.
• Åsgårdstrand: a smaller coastal town to the south, and the reason most art tourists come.
• Skoppum, Borre and Nykirke: inland villages. Skoppum is where the train stops.
• Bastøy: an island in the fjord, and the site of Bastøy Prison.

A local detail worth knowing, because Norwegians from the area will bring it up: between 1988 and 2002 the municipality was not officially called Horten at all. It was called Borre. The name changed back to Horten on 1 June 2002 after a referendum that came in at 6,557 votes for Horten and 6,218 for Borre. A margin of 339 votes decided what the place is called.

2. Karljohansvern, the Naval Base That Became a Park

In 1818 King Karl Johan decided that a new central naval establishment should be built at Horten. What went up became the main base of the Royal Norwegian Navy, and it is the single reason the town exists in its current form.

Karljohansvern is now a public cultural area: listed buildings, museums and beaches, roughly a twenty minute walk north-east from the town centre and the harbour. It is open to walk through. The Royal Norwegian Navy Band is still based there, so on the right day you will hear it before you see it.

3. The Two Museums Worth the Trip

Both sit at Karljohansvern, in the same building complex, which makes this an efficient afternoon.

Marinemuseet, the Royal Norwegian Navy Museum, was founded in 1853 and is one of the oldest naval museums in the world. Inside there are more than 150 model ships. Outside there is a Cold War submarine, KNM Utstein, and the motor torpedo boat KNM Blink; the frigate KNM Narvik is open during the summer season. The collection also holds HNoMS Rap, built in 1873 and the first torpedo boat in the world. In summer the museum runs June to August, roughly 11 to 4, but check the museum’s own site before you drive out.

Preus Museum is Norway’s national museum of photography. It was founded in 1976 by the photographer Leif Preus, who was born in Horten in 1928 and died in 2013. A national photography museum in a town of 27,700 is the kind of thing that only happens when a local collector refuses to move.

4. Borre: the First National Park, and the Kings’ Graves

Borre National Park sits between the town of Horten and Åsgårdstrand. It covers about 180,000 square metres and it was the first national park founded in Norway, which is a sentence most Norwegians would guess wrong on.

The reason it was protected is the Borre mound cemetery, which holds the largest collection of kings’ graves in Scandinavia, with graves dating back to the Migration Period. They may represent northern Europe’s most extensive collection of graves of the Yngling dynasty. Excavations here produced craft work now displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, and gave their name to the “Borre style” of Viking ornament, known for animal and knot patterns often used to decorate harnesses.

The Midgard Viking Centre, which opened in 2000 to promote Vestfold’s Viking heritage, sits near the mounds and is the place to start if you want context before walking the field.

5. Åsgårdstrand and Munch’s Seven Summers

Åsgårdstrand is a small white-painted coastal town in the south of the municipality. It has been a vacation and bathing destination since 1920 and was an artists’ colony before that, drawing Edvard Munch and Fritz Thaulow.

Munch first summered here in 1889 and spent seven summers at his vacation house, Munchs lille hus, “Munch’s Little House,” now a museum at Munchsgate 25. The town and its bridge are the setting for Pikene på broen, The Girls on the Bridge. You can stand roughly where it was painted, which is a rarer experience than the Munch museum in Oslo can offer.

Åsgårdstrand also has a women’s bathing club that keeps the town’s bathing traditions going.

6. The Water, the Birds and a 700-Year-Old Oak

Borrevannet is a lake with a national bird sanctuary attached. A 2003 count recorded 255 species observed there, with 110 confirmed nesting. If you carry binoculars anywhere in Vestfold, carry them here.

Beyond that, the municipality has nature preserves at Vealøs, Adalstjern, Frebergsvik and Falkensten, plus preserves at Borrevannet itself and on the islands of Løvøya and Bastøy. By the harbour stands Tordenskjoldeika, a protected oak roughly 700 years old, which predates the navy, the town and the name argument.

There are coastal walking trails, and this is good cycling country, with routes running past Viking sites, protected forest and coastline. Flat, mostly. See the wider Norway travel tips for the general rules on access and weather.

7. Getting There

• Ferry: the Bastø Fosen ferry between Moss and Horten crosses the Oslofjord and is Norway’s busiest ferry route. The crossing takes about 30 minutes, with one to four departures an hour, carrying roughly 1.8 million vehicles and 3.5 million passengers a year. It is part of the national road network. Foot passengers travel free; vehicles pay.
• Car: Horten is about 90 to 100 km south of Oslo. Take the E18 south, then Rv310 or Rv306.
• Train: the Vestfold Line does not run through the town centre. The station is at Skoppum, about 8 km away, roughly 1 hour 10 minutes from Oslo Central.
• Bus: several daily departures from Oslo, about two hours.
• Air: the nearest airport is Sandefjord Airport Torp. Oslo Gardermoen is about 90 minutes by car.

The ferry is the interesting option. It is a working commuter route rather than a sightseeing cruise, and walking on costs nothing.

8. Where to Stay and Eat

Real places, in and around the municipality. Check current availability and rates directly, because those change and this page will not:

• Thon Hotel Horten, in the town centre.
• Grand Hotel Åsgårdstrand, by the marina.
• Hotell Karljohansvern at Sjømilitære Samfund, on the old naval base.
• Tretopphytter Oslofjord, treetop cabins at Nordre Vegge outside town.
• Løvøya Oslofjord and Borre Family Camping, the latter between Horten and Åsgårdstrand.

On food, this guide is deliberately not naming restaurants. A small town’s dining list turns over faster than any travel page can track, and the last version of this article invented three restaurants that never existed. Check visitvestfold.com for what is actually open when you go.

What Horten Is Now

The Navy moved its main base to Bergen mid-century and Horten Verft, the shipyard, went bankrupt in 1987. What replaced them is not tourism. Kongsberg Maritime and a cluster of electronics and ultrasound firms are now among the town’s biggest employers, and the University of South-Eastern Norway has its Bakkenteigen campus here with over 4,000 students. A navy town that turned into a sensor town, which is a more common Norwegian story than the fjord brochures let on. The musician Girl in Red, Marie Ulven Ringheim, was born here in 1999.

The town’s coat of arms, granted in 1907, gets it about right: a naval fort and a boat below, a rose above, for the base and for the town’s gardens. Come for the museums and the mounds, stay because the ferry back does not leave for another forty minutes.