Walaker Hotel – Norway's oldest address, still in family hands

On the shore of the Lustrafjord, an inner arm of the Sognefjord, Walaker Hotel has been taking in travellers since 1640, when a guesthouse and coaching inn opened in Solvorn and, for a time, stood as the only business of its kind in the area. Fifty years later, in 1690, Christian Nitter bought the inn, and the family he founded has run it ever since, now in its ninth generation — the claim, widely repeated, to being Norway's oldest hotel still in its founding family's hands. Today the 22 rooms sit across three historic buildings and a new wing, looking out over mountains, garden and fjord. The MICHELIN Guide gives Walaker Two MICHELIN Keys, a recognition that sits easily with a house where the floors creak with real age, where dinner is still a fixed nightly ritual, and where the garden running down towards the water has barely changed in the telling.

01The house

The main building dates from between 1630 and 1650 and did its first work as a guesthouse and coaching inn for travellers crossing Inner Sogn; the Tingstova, standing apart in the courtyard, is just as old, tracing back to 1630 itself. Both were built in byggeskikk, the Norwegian vernacular tradition, and the main house and Tingstova still show the centuries-old joinery and construction techniques passed down through the generations who built and maintained them.

The hotel's place on the early tourist map of Western Norway was sealed in 1865, when Crown Prince Carl XV of Sweden visited the area accompanied by the photographer Mathias Hansen, who is thought to have taken the first photographs ever made of Solvorn and the hotel itself.

02Rooms and suites

Of the 22 rooms, seven historical rooms sit in the original main house and four more in the old Courthouse — the Tingstova — with the remaining rooms in a newer annexe. Rooms in the two oldest buildings are decorated in traditional Norwegian style, with painted wooden floors, colourful wooden bed frames and William Morris-esque wallpaper; bathrooms are compact but contemporary, save for two larger corner rooms with baths and fjord views.

Insider tip

Open seasonally, April to October; the only hotel and restaurant in the village, so book ahead.

The newest address on the property is Villa Walaker, built in 2024 a hundred metres' walk from the Main House: four rooms, each with its own outdoor seating area facing a trickling garden pond and a view down over the hotel grounds to a glimpse of the fjord. The Garden Wing, built in 1964, has eleven rooms facing the garden and the fjord, each with a double bed that splits into two singles and a sofa bed for a third guest.

03Where to eat

Dinner is a fixed, four-course set menu with wine recommendations, served every evening at 19:30 in the restaurant of the main building — an arrangement that has become central to the Walaker experience rather than an optional extra. Ingredients come from the hotel's own garden and from what the family calls the natural pantry of Inner Sogn, the valley's farms, orchards and fjord waters.

The restaurant's reach beyond Norway has been noted by Falstaff, which has awarded the hotel 81 points for its combination of gourmet food, rose garden and seaside setting.

04The bar and wine cellar

Walaker's wine cellar is described by the hotel itself as award-winning, built up over generations to offer a selection of exclusive bottles chosen to match each course of the evening menu. The public rooms carry a wood-burning fireplace and a lounge among their listed amenities, the kind of detail that explains why guests tend to end the evening there rather than in a room.

Scott Dunn, among the agencies that send guests to Walaker, describes the salon as the place for a cosy evening by the fire with a glass of red wine, or tea and a cinnamon bun after a day on the trails — an apt summary of how the hotel's communal spaces are actually used.

05The garden and the gallery

Guests are free to use the garden, with its roses and lilacs, and to swim from the hotel's own small beach in a sheltered cove, or to wander the village's old boathouses along the fjord. Kayaks and bicycles are provided free of charge for exploring the water and the shoreline.

Behind the hotel stands Galleri Walaker 300, opened in the old farm outbuilding in the courtyard to mark the Nitter family's 300th anniversary at Walaker and now hosting changing exhibitions of Norwegian artists each summer. The barn itself dates from 1883 and was built using material salvaged from a wooden church raised in Solvorn around 1600 — traces of that earlier building are still visible inside. The gallery typically runs two exhibitions a year, one from May to June and a second from July to September.

06The neighbourhood

Solvorn is a picturesque hamlet of only a couple of hundred people, set on the Lustrafjord, the innermost tributary of the Sognefjord — Norway's longest and deepest. From the hotel's own pier, a small ferry crosses to the UNESCO-listed Urnes Stave Church, while nature trails and further swimming beaches start more or less at the garden gate. The wider Sognefjord region has been named the world's best tourist destination by National Geographic, and Walaker sits close to its centre.

Sogndal, 17 kilometres away, has its own restaurants and a small airport; Widerøe flights connect it to Oslo in around 45 minutes, to Bergen in about 35, and to Sandane in roughly 25. The mountains above Solvorn are built for walking, and guided glacier walks can be arranged on request for those wanting to get closer to the ice fields further up the valley.

07Making the most of a stay

Walaker opens seasonally, broadly from mid-April through early October, and closes for the winter like many of the old summer hotels of the Norwegian fjords. Because it is the only hotel and restaurant in Solvorn, tables and rooms sell out quickly in high summer, and early booking is worth the effort. Breakfast, afternoon tea and a number of outdoor activities are included for guests as a matter of course.

The family that answers the door today is Ole Henrik Nitter Walaker and his wife Astrid, continuing a line of hosts that stretches back, with barely a break, to Christian Nitter's purchase of the inn in 1690.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.