Oslo

Not reliably, and it is the single most common misunderstanding on Norwegian itineraries. Oslo sits far south of the Arctic Circle and well outside the band where the aurora appears regularly; a strong solar event can occasionally push it far enough south to be glimpsed, but nobody should plan a trip around that. The aurora leg belongs to northern Norway — Tromsø, in Troms county — which is a flight from Oslo and a genuinely different destination. A package pairing the two is doing so because they are two separate experiences, not because Oslo is a viewing site.

It is the forest that covers most of Oslo municipality, protected by its own legislation, and yes — it is arguably the easiest wilderness access of any European capital. The metro runs up into it: one line ends at a forest lake, another at a ridge in the trees, both on an ordinary city fare. There are marked trails, huts serving food, and in winter hundreds of kilometres of prepared cross-country tracks, some of them floodlit. Norwegians treat it as an extension of the city rather than an excursion, and visitors with even half a day spare should do the same.

Three to four. Two nights covers the waterfront, the major museums and the older centre and leaves nothing over. The third buys the marka — the metro into the forest, a walk and the view back over the fjord — and the fourth the islands or a slower museum day. Beyond four nights most trips are better served by moving on to Bergen or the north, because the things Norway is famous for are largely somewhere else.

No, and this catches people out because Oslo sits on a fjord. The Oslofjord is a broad, shallow, gentle inlet dotted with islands and summer houses — pleasant, and nothing like the postcards. The steep, narrow fjords with waterfalls dropping from a thousand metres are in Vestland on the west coast: the Sognefjord, the Nærøyfjord and the Geirangerfjord, reached from Bergen. Getting there from Oslo is a flight or a long and genuinely beautiful rail journey, not a day trip.

Norway is NOT in the European Union, but it IS in the Schengen area, and travellers regularly get one of those two facts wrong in both directions. For Indian passport holders that means a Schengen visa is required, and the same visa covers a trip taking in, say, Denmark or Sweden. The currency is the Norwegian krone, not the euro. Norway is also genuinely expensive by European standards, which is worth building into the budget rather than discovering on arrival.

A great deal, and it is the season the marka comes into its own. The same forest paths that are walked in summer become prepared cross-country ski trails inside the city boundary, some of them floodlit for the long afternoons, with equipment available to rent and gentle terrain for beginners. Holmenkollen has its ski museum and its tower view year-round. The trade-off is daylight: midwinter days are very short, so the city half of the trip becomes museums, food halls and coffee rather than long walks.