If you've seen Troll 2 on Netflix, you've seen Stavkroa. The film opens with a dramatic attack sequence at this very après-ski bar - though on a typical Saturday night, the real chaos inside might rival anything a movie troll could manage.
Stavkroa bills itself as the world's best après-ski, and it's not subtle about it. The building is designed to look like a medieval stave church, which is either brilliantly ironic or deeply sacrilegious depending on your perspective. Inside, nearly 3,000 people can pack into five different venues across multiple floors.
It started in 1989 when two guys from Fredrikstad moved to Hemsedal with a vision. What began as a local mountain pub evolved into what many consider the world's largest indoor après-ski arena. The main floor is where the tables become the dance floor - literally. People stand on them, dance on them, and occasionally spill beer all over them while resident DJ Micke plays singalong anthems.
The slogan is "Here to sin." The atmosphere is somewhere between a Viking feast and a European megaclub. There's a VIP mezzanine for those who prefer to watch the madness from above, a nightclub in the basement that keeps going after the après-ski winds down, and a Western-themed saloon for reasons nobody can quite explain.
Here's what the marketing doesn't tell you: on busy weekends, if you're not in the queue by 14:00, you're probably not getting in. That means choosing between a full day on the slopes or getting into Stavkroa. You can't really do both. The official opening times say 15:00 on weekends, but the queue starts forming long before that.
So you'll see groups abandoning perfectly good skiing conditions at lunchtime to secure their spot. Whether that's a sign of how good the party is or how absurd ski culture has become is up to you.