Lierne: National Park, Hiking Trails and Cultural Landscape

Lierne combines impressive nature with trails, museums and a cultural landscape shaped by long-standing use. Lierne National Park lies entirely within the municipality. Together with adjacent protected areas, it forms a large, continuous wilderness area with few or no technical interventions. If you plan to spend most of your trip outdoors, you’ll find a range of ideas here: from a short circular walk to a mountain hike described as a day trip. The museums and the cultural landscape of Kvelia also offer their own distinctive experiences.

Wilderness, Ice Age Landforms and Wildlife

The landscape in the national park bears traces of the Ice Age. Landforms found there include Rogen moraines, drumlins, eskers, meltwater channels and ice-marginal deposits. These varied landforms give the landscape its geological character. Hestkjøltoppen provides a reference point for the elevations in Lierne: at 1,390 metres above sea level, it is the municipality’s highest mountain.

The national park is home to birds such as dotterels, purple sandpipers and pomarine skuas. Wolverines, lynxes, brown bears and Arctic foxes are also found there. If you’re interested in how people and predators live alongside one another, you can also visit the exhibition “Living from Nature – Living with Predators” at the Lierne National Park Centre. It opened in 2007. The centre serves as a visitor centre for Lierne National Park and Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella National Park.

Hikes for Different Levels of Ability

For a walk or run, consider Liernetur’s Folkestien: this waymarked circular trail is 5 kilometres long and starts and ends at Sørli Museum. It is suitable for walks or runs with a pushchair. If you’re looking for a shorter route with a significant elevation gain, Liernetur’s Skærvknulen trail is in Kvelia. It is 4.4 kilometres long and has an elevation gain of 386 metres.

The hike to Hestkjøltoppen is a different proposition. It is described as an 8- to 12-hour day trip for experienced hikers. This time range and its classification as a hike for experienced hikers help distinguish it from the shorter trail options. If you include excursions in your holiday plans, take note of the stated starting points: Folkestien starts at Sørli Museum; one access point to the national park is at Muru, and another approach is via Sørli and Løvsjølia.

From the access point at Muru, a path about 1 kilometre long leads into the national park. The large national park monument stands 300 metres inside the park. A copper plaque bears an inscription by Crown Princess Mette-Marit; from the monument, the view extends to the west and north. The approximate length of the path and the monument’s location provide a clear point of reference for this excursion.

Museums and Traces of Life in the Landscape

Sørli Museum is an open-air museum with 16 museum buildings. These include a farm, a summer mountain farm, a forest cabin and an open-air stage. Nordli Museum comprises the former municipal building, Allheim, with various period-room exhibitions, as well as a village museum with six houses from the 18th and 19th centuries. The two museums thus offer different insights: one is described as an open-air museum with several types of buildings, while the other combines exhibitions in a former municipal building with a village museum.

Kvelia UKL is a continuous cultural landscape where agriculture, forest, mountains and waterways are interconnected. It preserves cultural heritage sites and biological values shaped by long-term use. An excursion to the ruins of six summer mountain farm huts also leads to traces of this use. In Kvelia, visitors can also take a tour to a bear’s den east of Kvemoen, accompanied by bear stories, or a tour to Rømmervasseteren, which can be reached on foot or by boat.

One of the region’s special events is Flyktningerennet, an annual ski race from Nordli to Gäddede. It complements the hiking and nature experiences with a cross-border sporting connection.

Which Starting Point Is Right for Your Trip?

When choosing a holiday apartment, you can first consider which experiences you want to focus on: the national park and mountain hikes, the shorter trails, museums or the cultural landscape of Kvelia. The trails and activities mentioned have different starting points and formats; bear this in mind when choosing where to stay, and don’t treat them as a single circular route. If you’d like to discover several sides of Lierne, you can include nature experiences and museum visits in your trip and choose each destination individually.

For more help choosing a location, you can also find pages about Nordli and Sørli.

More destinations: Stjørdal, Grong, Leksvik, Levanger, Leka, Verran.

Back to the main travel overview: Nord-Trondelag.