Design
Norway May Build an Underwater Tunnel to Ford the Fjords
The project would be the first of its kind in the world.
The fjords that make Norway’s coast so breathtaking also make the landscape exceedingly time-consuming to navigate. A drive on the main coastal artery, E39, from Stavanger to Sogneford is less than 250 miles, but takes more than seven hours, traversing as it does countless high-cliffed glacial inlets carved miles into the coasts. These are stunning-but-arduous treks for tourists, and time and productivity lost for locals.
Conventional bridges and tunnels sound like obvious solutions, and Norway has its fair share of those. But those come with their own problems: the floor of every fjord has its own delicate geology, bridges can disrupt maritime activities, and steel trusses risk sullying the pristine natural beauty.