— A casino resort on a cold northern bay
Larch, glass and granite at the head of the water. Forty-six rooms facing north, a smokehouse that runs from six in the morning, four saunas built low on the rocks, and Nordlys Hall — the resort's own casino floor, open every evening to adults.
18+Nordlys Hall is a land-based casino floor for adults of 18 and over. A document with your photograph on it is checked at the door each time you come. Nothing on this website is a game and nothing on it takes money.
01 The house
Ninety years of cured herring left this bay, then the sheds stood empty for forty more. The granite footings were still true, so they stayed.
Everything above those footings is new: larch boards that have already gone silver, triple glazing, and more insulation than the old builders would have believed possible. The curing shed became the smokehouse kitchen and kept its roof trusses. The sauna house was built from nothing, low on the rocks where the ground gives way to water, because that is the only sensible place to put one.
Forty-six rooms run along three floors, all of them turned north. In June the light simply refuses to leave; in January you get four hours of blue and then the sky puts on a show that no one has yet managed to photograph properly from the pier. Both are good reasons to come, for different kinds of guest.
Nordlys Hall, the casino floor, occupies the long first-floor room above the lobby, with a gallery over it where the musicians sit on Saturdays. It is a land-based casino inside a hotel, nothing more and nothing less. You walk in through the door, you show your identification, and you play at a table with other people standing around it. There is no app, no account and no version of any of it on this website.
02 Rooms
Wool blankets, a stone basin, a kettle with proper leaf tea and a window you are allowed to open. Floor areas are measured to the nearest square metre.
03 Nordlys Hall · 18+
Nine tables, a short row of cabinets, a bar at the window end and a gallery overhead. Small enough that the staff learn your name by the second evening.
The casino at Nordkap Bay was fitted into the longest room in the building, which used to be where the nets were mended. Three of the windows were kept; the rest of the wall is lined in dark timber so that the lamps over the tables do the work. In winter the curtains stay open on the north side, because the sky occasionally gives the room a better show than anything on the baize.
Our casino hosts will teach any game on the floor before you put a chip down, properly and without an audience. Most people start on a Wednesday, when a table is set aside for exactly that and nobody is playing for anything.
To be plain about it: this is a land-based casino inside a hotel, open to adult visitors who walk through the door. The website you are reading now offers no online casino games, accepts no bets and processes no payments of any kind.
Open daily 17:00 – 02:00 · Friday and Saturday until 03:00
04 Eat and drink
The boats land what they land. Menus are written in the morning and crossed out as things run out, which is the honest way round.
The kitchen the whole place was rebuilt around. Oak and juniper in the smoker behind glass, cold-smoked char cut at the counter, hot-smoked lamb and root vegetables from under the ash. Nine tables, one seating a night between October and March.
Oat porridge with lingonberry, soft eggs, dark rye and a soup chalked up at eleven. Windows on three sides and a view of the pier, so breakfast here regularly takes twice as long as anybody planned.
Twelve stools around a bed of crushed ice. Oysters, langoustine, brown crab, a bowl of mussels in cider, and six dry white wines sold by the glass until the ice gives out for the day.
Aquavit by the flight, cold beer from two breweries up the coast, and a long list of birch, sea-buckthorn and rhubarb drinks with no alcohol in them whatsoever. The bar keeps its own door into Nordlys Hall, so an evening can go either way.
05 The week
Residents and visitors are equally welcome at all of it. Two or three evenings fill up, so reception is the right place to ask.
The smokehouse doors come open and the chef talks through a morning of work: brines, woods, temperatures, what went wrong last week. Tasting at the end of it.
A sailor, a marine biologist or whoever is ringing birds on the headland this month takes the long table for an hour. Bring a drink and sit down.
Casino hosts teach roulette and blackjack on a quiet table with nothing staked on it, from the rules up. Adults of 18 and over, identification at the door as usual.
Six bottles poured blind at Saltbaren, with dark bread, butter and smoked roe to keep everybody upright.
All four saunas lit, steam poured on the hour, the bay ladder in constant use and a fire on the rocks until somebody puts it out.
A duo or a trio play above Nordlys Hall: fiddle, double bass, now and then a singer who knows the old coast songs.
One menu, everybody at the same table, four courses and no interest at all in getting the room turned around quickly.
The programme bends with the season and with the weather. Reception keeps the current week written up by the stairs.
06 Sauna house
The sauna house is a single-storey building of stone and blackened timber, set so low on the rocks that at high water the sea comes within a few metres of the door. Inside there are four rooms at four different temperatures, a changing room with hooks and no lockers, and a bench outside where people sit wrapped in towels saying very little.
There is no music, no screen and no telephone in any of it. The one rule posted on the wall asks you to speak quietly in the hot rooms, and almost everybody keeps to it without being reminded twice.
07 Good to know
Rooms are ready from 16:00 and we ask for them back by 11:00. The road in is ploughed through the winter and the last two kilometres are gravel in any season. Bags can be left at reception on either side of a stay, and somebody is always at the desk.
Under-18s are welcome in the rooms, in Brygga and Røykhuset, at the shellfish counter and in the sauna house during family hours, which run until 17:00. Nordlys Hall is closed to them at every hour of the day, accompanied or not.
A level route runs from the car park through reception to the day kitchen, the smokehouse and the sauna house, and the lift serves all three floors. Three rooms are adapted, with roll-in showers. The pier decking has a handrail the whole way to the Boathouse. Write and say what makes a difference for you, and it will be set up before you get here.
Nordlys Hall is for adults of 18 and over, and a night in it should finish with you in a better mood than you walked in with. Our hosts will write a limit down with you, come and find you when an agreed hour is up, hold a break for a week or a season, or set up a confidential exclusion. They also keep the addresses of independent help at the desk, and hand them over without asking a single question.
08 Questions
No. Nordkap Bay is a resort on a northern bay with a land-based casino floor, Nordlys Hall, inside the building. These pages describe the property and stop there: no online casino games are offered here, no bets are taken and no money moves through this website.
Anyone aged 18 or over, or older where local rules set a higher minimum. Photo identification is checked at the door on every visit, whatever a visitor happens to look like, and a photograph of a document on a phone will not do.
Not at all. The hall, both kitchens, the shellfish counter and most of the week’s programme are open to people who are sleeping somewhere else entirely, subject to the age check and to space on the night.
Yes, to the rooms, to all the eating, and to the sauna house during family hours. The casino floor is the single place in the building they cannot go, and that holds at every hour, parent in tow or not.
Ask before you play rather than after. A host will write down a figure or a time with you, come and tell you when it is reached, or arrange a break that lasts a week, a month or a whole season. None of that is noted against your room or your name.
Day tickets go on sale at reception whenever the house is not full. Friday sauna night is the exception and is usually gone by Thursday afternoon, so ask early.
The gallery above Nordlys Hall seats twenty-four for dinner, and the Boathouse takes thirty standing. Write with your dates and the number of people and we will tell you honestly what is free.
09 Contact
Send the nights you have in mind, which room sounds right and anything that would make the stay easier: a cot, a quiet floor, a late ferry, a chair that needs space beside it. Reception answers by email, usually within the working day and always before the next one ends.
There is no booking engine on this site and no payment page. Everything is arranged by email or at the desk, by people.
Write to reception