Norway Struggling to Keep Up with Frozen Tourists

The hit Disney movie Frozen, set in a fictionalized version of Norway, has drawn legions of travelers to the Nordic country. The film was released in 2013, but the pipeline of tourists inspired to visit some of the places that appear depicted in the film has not slowed.

The small towns strung along the mountainous archipelago of Lofoten are seeing the impact particularly acutely, and the sparsely populated area is struggling to keep up with the throngs.

Since the Frozen release, foreign visits to Scandinavia have shot up by 20 percent. Norway’s Lofoten islands hosted more than 1 million people last summer, many of them seeking scenery similar to the movie.

There are only 24,000 full-time residents on the islands, and there have been complaints of issues with public toilets and the towns’ waste disposal system. The roadways, many of which are one-lane streets and bridges, are congested during peak travel times.

There’s a Matt Damon movie set in the islands that will be released in 2017 and that doesn’t promise to make things any better.