Jotunheimen

Some 3,500 square kilometres of the Scandinavian Mountains, and the plain fact about it is this: the twenty-nine highest mountains in Norway are all inside it, Galdhøpiggen at 2,469 metres among them. More than fifty marked trails cross the range, from afternoon walks to multi-day traverses between the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association’s lodges. British climbers opened the peaks in the late nineteenth century (Slingsby’s Norway, the Northern Playground did much of the recruiting) alongside Norwegians like Therese Bertheau. The poet Aasmund Olavsson Vinje gave the range its name in 1862, after Jötunheimr, the home of the giants.