160+ reviews

Radka Stankova

Radka moved to Lofoten in 2021 and lives in Reine, where she guides sightseeing tours and writes most of the travel guides on this site. She has been writing about Norway since 2015. A lot of what ends up here starts as a question travellers keep asking us on tours and in our Facebook groups.

What Radka writes about

Lofoten travel planning

Hiking in Lofoten

Winter hiking safety in Lofoten

Weather in Lofoten

Getting to Lofoten and ferries

Driving and winter roads in Norway

Camping in Lofoten

Tromsø and northern lights

Radka Stankova is the co-founder of Guide to Lofoten and the person behind most of the travel guides on this site. She lives in Reine, western Lofoten, where she guides sightseeing tours and joins the hikes now and then, mostly to prove that slow hikers get to the top too.

She started writing about Norway in 2015, with an angry article in Czech about tourists misusing the DNT mountain cabins. The route from there to Lofoten wasn’t exactly direct: oil and gas technology, then environmental chemistry, then a campervan trip down the Pan-American Highway that ended in Ushuaia when the pandemic hit.

In April 2021 she and Ivar moved to Fredvang to run a rorbu in a hundred-year-old fish factory. Guests kept asking the same questions. Where should we go? What will the weather do? Is Reinebringen safe in winter? How does the ferry actually work? Guide to Lofoten started as the answer to those questions, and that’s still how she writes. Every guide is built on what travellers ask us on tours and in our Facebook groups, and on what the team sees out on tours.

Expect honest takes on the weather, the ferries, Norwegian bureaucracy and the viewpoints that are more overhyped than extraordinary, usually with a bit of sarcasm.

Guides by Radka

Is Travel Insurance Worth It for a Lofoten Trip? The Short Answer Yes, travel insurance is worth it for a Lofoten or northern Norway...
Tourism in Lofoten is never impact-free, and we’d rather say so than pretend otherwise. We’re Ivar and Radka, and we run Guide to Lo...
An honest guide to winter hiking in Lofoten
Everyone wants that snowy Lofoten summit photo — the dramatic views, the white peaks, and the cotton candy sky everyone posts on Ins...
camping in lofoten_lofoten beach camp-03
Norway is marketed as a camping paradise. Thanks to the right to roam (allemannsretten), you can still sleep outside of designated c...
Driving in Norway: Trollstigen road
Is Trollstigen open today? The short answer: Not yet.   Trollstigen, also known as the Troll Road or Troll’s Ladder, is on almo...
winter closed roads in norway: Hardangervidda
Let’s talk about winter-closed roads in Norway — because a lot of people planning trips to Norway for April, May, or even June assum...
"Best of Lofoten" Sightseeing tour from Svolvær to Reine
Lofoten is, hands down, one of the most stunning places you’ll ever visit on a cruise—dramatic peaks, white-sand beaches, and charmi...
Reinebringen Lofoten how to get there by public bus
Reinebringen is one of Lofoten’s crown jewels, offering breathtaking views of Reine and Reinefjorden that attract around 250,000 vis...
winter roads in Lofoten
Driving in Lofoten during winter is no small task and requires preparation and caution. Once you pass Leknes, you’ll encounter narro...