Europe's northernmost point — a midnight sun plateau 300m above the Arctic Ocean
Nordkapp (North Cape) is a cliff on the Norwegian island of Magerøya that is widely presented as the northernmost point of Europe — technically the nearby Knivskjelodden cape reaches slightly further north, but Nordkapp's 307m clifftop has the visitor centre, the globe sculpture, and the mythological weight. Reached via Europe's only undersea road tunnel through the Barents Sea, Nordkapp is famous for the midnight sun (continuous daylight from mid-May to late July) and polar night (no sun November–January). The drive via the E69 through reindeer-dotted tundra and fishing villages is one of Sc…
The English navigator Richard Chancellor, searching for the Northeast Passage to China, rounded the cape in 1553 and named it 'North Cape'. It appeared on Dutch maps as the northern limit of Europe. The road to Nordkapp was built in the 1950s; before that it was accessible only by ship. The RV Nordkapp tourist steamer was a Hurtigruten fixture for decades. Today the site receives 200,000 visitors per year in summer and virtually nobody in the polar night months, when the Aurora Borealis is at its most dramatic.