What is special about Preikestolen?
The flatness is the whole thing
Norway has no shortage of high cliffs. What it has very few of is a high cliff with a level floor on top of it that you can walk out onto in ordinary boots and stand in the middle of. The plateau is almost flat, roughly square, and big enough that a group can spread out on it. That is why every photograph of the place works: the people in it are standing, casually, on a surface that has no business being there.
How the rock got that shape
Glacial ice steepened this wall of the valley at the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. Then meltwater got into the joints in the rock, froze, expanded, and levered angular blocks off the face. What fell away left the wall; what stayed is the slab, because the rock there resisted that process better than the rock that went. A gap about half a metre wide still runs across the plateau and is the subject of its own page, calmly.
Four things that have to be true at once
What works
- A flat top, which is rare and is what makes the photographs possible
- 604 metres of clean drop, described on the height page
- No railing and no barrier, which is a deliberate decision
- No ticket, no gate and no opening hours: it is free
Worth knowing
- It is four to five hours of uneven ground, not a viewpoint you drive to
- The plateau is often in cloud, and nobody can promise you the view
- In summer you will share the top with a great many people: the crowds page
- The edge is an edge, and there is nothing between you and it
What it is not
It is not a hard climb, it is not technical, and it is not a secret. It is also not a lookout with a car park at the top, which is the misunderstanding that spoils more visits than anything else. The hard part of Preikestolen is the walk, and the reason nobody warns you is that the famous photographs are taken from a drone or from a boat and never show the boulder field. What you actually walk is on the trail page.
The other thing that makes it unusual is the traffic. Roughly 350,000 people a year walk up an unfenced mountain path to stand on an unguarded cliff, and the arrangement holds because people mostly behave sensibly. That is worth a thought while you are up there.
Walk to the far side of the plateau, away from where the path arrives. Most people stop at the first edge they meet, and the view back along the fjord from the other corner is the one I would keep if I could only keep one.
What there is to book
Not the trail. Nobody sells a ticket to Preikestolen and nobody can, so anything you pay for is something else: the ride out of Stavanger, the guide who walks it with you, or the boat that shows you the cliff from the water. Which of the three you actually need is set out on the bookings page and in the comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Preikestolen so famous?
A flat 25 by 25 metre plateau 604 metres above a fjord, with no railing and no ticket, reachable on an ordinary day walk.
Is it worth the walk?
For most people yes, if they know it is four to five hours of uneven ground. See is it worth it.
Can you see it without hiking?
Yes, from the water. The Lysefjord cruise passes directly below the cliff.