Norway · Buskerud fylke
Where to Stay in Flå, Buskerud fylke
Flå sits at the lower end of Hallingdal in south-eastern Norway, a mountain municipality in Buskerud whose best-known address is Bjørneparken.
Find your area →
Where to stay in Flå
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Flå spreads far wider than the village that carries its name. The municipality covers 704 square kilometres of Hallingdal, so a bed here can mean the small centre beside Flå kirke or a cabin somewhere up the mountain ground, and the two experiences have almost nothing in common beyond the postal address. The centre is the practical base for most visits.
Families arriving for Bjørneparken keep close to the village, where the animal park, the church and the road through the valley all sit within a few minutes of one another. Higher up, the appeal changes entirely. Winter stays go to the mountain side for the skiing that the terrain above the valley supports, and those beds trade walkability for space, quiet and a drive down whenever anything is needed from the centre of Flå.
Fyrisjøen sits in that upper country. Anyone choosing between the two should decide first whether the trip is built around Bjørneparken and the village or around the mountain ground of Hallingdal, because in a municipality of this size that single choice fixes everything else about the days.
About Flå
Bjørneparken pulls traffic off the valley road at Flå.
What is Flå known for?
The animal park is what most people stop for, and it sits in a municipality that otherwise runs on mountain ground, 704 square kilometres of it spread across the lowest reach of Hallingdal in Buskerud. Skiing works the winter half. Flå kirke and the water at Fyrisjøen fill out a short list of named places for somewhere this large.
What are the main landmarks in Flå?
Bjørneparken is the one address in Flå that people arrive for deliberately. The animal park sits by the valley road and gives a small municipality a reason to be a destination rather than a stretch of the drive up Hallingdal, which is unusual for a place of this size. Flå kirke is quieter.
The parish church anchors the village, and Fyrisjøen carries the name of the water further up in the mountain ground of Buskerud.
What is the history of Flå?
Flå became its own municipality on 1 January 1905, separated from Nes. That date is the whole of its administrative beginning, and everything before it belongs to Nes and to the older frame of Hallingdal, the valley and traditional region whose lowest and most south-easterly reach this is. Hallingdal is the older unit.
Flå kirke is the building that ties the present village to that longer stretch of parish life in Buskerud. What the municipality inherited was area rather than numbers: 704 square kilometres of valley floor and mountain ground, with a single village holding the administrative centre and the rest given over to terrain. Fyrisjøen lies out in that terrain.
The modern chapter is shorter and more commercial, since Bjørneparken turned a stop on the road up Hallingdal into somewhere with a reason to pull in, and the animal park is the reason many arrivals know the name of Flå at all, without other business in Buskerud. Skiing did the rest of the work. Winter use of the mountain ground above the valley gave the municipality a second season, and between that and the park, a place of 704 square kilometres and one village found two ways to matter beyond its own borders.
Where is Flå?
Flå occupies 704 square kilometres at the lowest and most south-easterly point of Hallingdal, in south-eastern Norway. Mountain ground dominates. The valley floor carries the village, the road and Flå kirke, while the land rises away on both sides into the terrain that gives the municipality its winter use and most of its area, with Fyrisjøen among the named water up there.
Buskerud continues beyond the ridges.
What is the climate of Flå?
Hallingdal does the work here. A valley running down between mountain sides collects cold air and holds it, which is why the subpolar band bites harder at Flå than a glance at the map would suggest, and why snow on the ground above the village lasts long enough to carry a ski season. The short season comes late.
Fyrisjøen and the higher ground thaw later than the valley floor, so the two halves of the municipality run several weeks apart in the same year.
How do you get to Flå?
The road up Hallingdal passes straight through. Flå lies at the valley's lowest and most south-easterly point, which makes it the first of the Hallingdal settlements for anyone arriving from the direction of Nes, and the reason Bjørneparken works as a break in a longer drive. Everything else climbs.
Side roads leave the valley floor for the mountain ground of the municipality's 704 square kilometres, reaching Fyrisjøen and the winter terrain that the village of Flå itself does not show.
Good for
More cities in Buskerud fylke
Updated August 2026