Eggum Sightseeing: Art, Ruins and Open Sea

November 7, 2026

Eggum is not a town with a list of monuments. It is a scatter of houses around a fish-landing station at the end of a dead-end road on Vestvågøy, in Lofoten, facing the open Norwegian Sea. The sights are few, free and outdoors, and all of them sit within an easy walk of one car park. Plan on a car to get here: the village is about 12 km from the E10 at Bøstad and about 25 km from Leknes.

The Eggum rest area by Snøhetta

The rest area is one of the stops on the Norwegian Scenic Route through Lofoten. Snøhetta, the Oslo architects, reshaped an old gravel pit behind the hill into an amphitheatre in 2007. The parking bays are laid out so every vehicle looks at the sea, and the edges are gabion walls packed with stone excavated on the spot. The service building has two parts: a concrete block with toilets, and a wooden room with a small kitchen whose walls are made from driftlogs found on the beach. Camper vans have their own bays. The site is open all year and is wheelchair accessible; the toilets open from early May to early October. Emptying motorhome toilets here is not allowed. Details are on the Norwegian Scenic Routes page .

Borga, the radar station ruin

On the knoll above the car park stand the round stone walls of a German radar station from the Second World War, which is why locals call the spot Borga. You can walk up in a few minutes. Treat it as a historic site: the walls are unfenced and the ground is rough.

Hode by Markus Raetz

Walk west from the car park along the gravel track by the lake for about 1 to 1.5 km and you reach Hode, a work by the Swiss artist Markus Raetz from 1992. It belongs to Skulpturlandskap Nordland, a set of artworks placed across the county. The iron head stands on a granite column and is 178 cm tall. Circle it slowly: the shape shifts 16 times, and the portrait you saw from the sea side becomes a head turned upside down from the far side. It is free to visit at any time.

The boulder beach and the moraine

West of the village the shore is a long beach of rounded stones, backed by a large end moraine left by the ice. Since 2002 both have been protected as Eggum naturreservat, for their geology and plant life. You are welcome to walk here, but tents are not allowed inside the reserve and plants, seaweed included, are protected. The sea is cold and the waves come straight in, so admire it from the stones.

Midnight sun and northern lights

From about the last week of May to mid-July the sun does not set, and it hangs low over the northern horizon around midnight. In the dark months, from September to early April, clear nights can bring the aurora; there is little artificial light here, but clouds come and go quickly, so nothing is certain. Between about 8 December and early January the sun does not rise at all.

Galleri Eggum

A small summer gallery on the road in, about 4.6 km from the E10, shows around 60 paintings and prints by Rolf Aarøe Arnesen in an 1878 farm barn. Entry is free; it opens roughly late June to mid-September, so check the gallery site before driving out.

Wider Lofoten sightseeing tours are listed on Viator .