Looking through Instagram posts tagged with the hashtag #Ytre-Hvaler-Nationalpark, it’s hard not to notice that one in three ‘heroes’ is gourmet cuisine, specifically seafood – of all kinds and in all possible combinations: crabs, shrimps, mussels, oysters, many types fish… Mediterranean Sea? No, but veeeeery close to these spirit: Ytre Hvaler National Park is Norway’s first marine national park where only 4% of the protected area is above sea level and most of it is hidden underwater. Here you can experience one of Norway’s most beautiful coastal and archipelago landscapes and an equally impressive underwater landscape.

To the south, the national park borders Sweden and covers the outer parts of the skerries of the eastern shore of the Oslofjord. Created in 2009, Ytre Hvaler aims to protect one of the world’s largest costal cold-water coral reefs – Tisler (more than 1,200 meters long).

Here everything is the opposite of the “ordinary” national park: instead of coniferous forests there is a kelp forests and fields of eelgrass, instead of mountains there are reefs formed by white Lophelia deep-sea corals. The underwater world of the Ytre Hvaler archipelagos impresses with the richness of rare and endangered plant species, and the local butterfly fauna has over 950 species.

The park is famous not only for the sculptures that await tourists on the coast and working lighthouses, but also for its underwater secrets. There are more than 50 sunken ships in the depths, the most famous of which is the Danish frigate HDMS Lossen, which sank during the Christmas Flood in 1717.