Tourism
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The village of Flåm has been a tourist destination since the late 19th century. It currently receives almost 450,000 visitors a year. Most ride the 20-kilometre (12 mi) Flåm Line between Flåm and Myrdal Station, one of the steepest railway tracks at 1 in 18 (not counting rack railways) in the world. There are also a few spirals. A former rail station building in Flåm now houses a museum dedicated to the Flåm railway.
The harbour of Flåm receives some 160 cruise ships per year.
Issues due to tourism[edit]
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (December 2024)
Air pollution in Flåm and nearby Geiranger during the cruise season is similar to that of a big city. Cruise traffic in Norway, which is one of the largest exporters of oil in the world, emits more NOx than all road traffic in Norway combined. In a 2005 Bergens Tidende article, Kjetil Smørås (a hotel director and chairman of Fjord Norge said, "The cruise traffic pollutes more than several ten thousands of cars, and many of the worst ships sail up here (...) cruise tourists trod down the pristine Norwegian nature, and destroy the foundation for Vestlandet's four entries on Unesco's World Heritage lists."
In 2009, Jens Riisnæs (an author and NRK journalist) said, "We have the world's most beautiful nation, we don't need to follow the cruise operators' premises. They can go other places with their polluting ships. It is unwanted noise."
In 2009, Dagens Næringsliv said that a report by Vestlandsforskning says that both, "Flåm and Geiranger are nearing a limit in capacity. It might be an alternative and rather stand forth as a «relaxed», exclusive and somewhat less of a mass tourism, cruise destination."
In a 2014 Dagens Næringsliv article, a farmer said, "Previously the smell of summer was that of grass that had been cut. Now the smell is of heavy oil." A retired couple also talk about fish that have disappeared from the fjord. In Norway, cruise ships are permitted to dump overboard their greywater in the postcard-narrow fjord-arms. Furthermore, the news article says that defecation in public by tourists, is already a problem; the village's train station has the only public toilets, and 200,000 tourists are expected in the summer season.
In 2014, tourism professor Arvid Viken said, "it is about time this [type of] tourism is evaluated somewhat more soberly than how it has been done in many municipalities for some years." Furthermore, the tourism "has low profit per tourist, but is often associated with considerable costs for the municipal administrations."
