Trollstigen (The troll path) is a very popular tourist attraction in Rauma in Møre og Romsdal. This road is likely the most famous Norwegian road, and tourists are not only coming to take photos of it, but also to drive up and down the zigzagging road.
Despite being a popular tourist attraction, the road is only open during the summer season, but when exactly can you expect Trollstigen to be open for the year?
Trollstigen opens and closes for traffic based on when the weather and snow allows for it. It typically opens around the middle of May, and closes in the middle of November.
The road tend to close for the year after the first big snowfall of the year, so it will vary from year to year. At a certain point, Statens vegvesen simply decides that the snow is too high, and closes the road down on short notice.
It’s impossible to mow all the snow at Tollstigen
The reason why the road is closed during the winter is because of the insane amount of snowfall in the area. It’s simple impossible to mow all the snow away in a manner that will make it safe to drive up and down the road.
It is possible to reach Trollstigen by skis in the winter, but that will obviously be a very different experience from seeing the zigzagging road in the summertime.
The visitor center at top of Trollstigen was even hit by an avalanche in the winter of 2021/2022, but it has opened for visitors again in the summer of 2022. This also caused some damage to the road itself, but this was fixed early on in 2022, so it didn’t affect the Trollstigen season by more than a weeks time.
Make sure to have winter tires in May, September and October
Even tough Trollstigen is typically closed when the heavy snow arrives, there can still be light snowfall when the road is open. Keep in mind that the road is high in the mountains, and it can be snowy there even if it’s nice and sunny down by the sea level.
There are lots of tourists who have had trouble at Trollstigen in May, September and early October because they had summer tires on their car. Summer tires will make driving up or down the road very dangerous.
So make sure you have either studded or non-studded winter tires if you’re coming to Trollstigen very early after it opens in May, or late in the autumn to be on the safe side.
You do absolutely not want to get caught up at the top with summer tires if it begins to snow.
How to check if Trollstigen is open for the year
Since the Trollstigen season will vary depending on the snowfall, it’s impossible to give exact dates. However, there is a method to checking if it’s open or not. Just go to the website called “Vinterstengde strekninger” (roads closed in winter) at Nasjonale turistveger (National tourist roads) to see the current status.
The entries called “Geiranger – Trollstigen” and “Langvatnet – Geiranger (fv. 63)” are the ones you want to check. If it says “Åpen” it means open, and “Stengt” means closed.
It will also tell you the date it opened or closed. So if it says “Stengt 28.10.2022” it means that Trollstigen closed for the season on October 28 that year.
Keep in mind that the latter date is just an example, not a real date.
Historic opening and closing dates for Trollstigen
Below is a table of the opening and closing dates for Trollstigen in the last 5 years. This will give you an indication as to when to expect the road to open and close, but as you can see, the dates have a pretty big range.
| Year | Opening date | Closing date |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | May 24 | November 13 |
| 2018 | May 11 | December 7 |
| 2019 | May 16 | October 30 |
| 2020 | May 12 | November 30 |
| 2021 | May 22 | November 16 |
| 2022 | June 9* | December 7 |
| 2023 | May 29 | TBD |
The closing dates varies wildly, from as early as late October to a week into December. While the weather forecast can help predict when the road will close, it will typically close on very short notice when it begins to snow for real.
There are even a few cases where the road has reopened after it first closed. In these cases the road has been open for a week or two in November because of sudden warm weather that made it manageable to mow the snow away to make it safe to use the road.
