Norway's coastal road from the town of Stiklestad to the Arctic city of Bodø is a 670km journey between two very different worlds. It's also one of the most beautiful road trips on the planet.

At one end is the quiet sophistication of central Norway, with its perfectly manicured meadows and oxblood-red wooden cabins. At the other is the spare, serene beauty of the north: a world of glaciers, ice-bound mountains and empty, far horizons. Connecting the two, the Kystriksveien – a route also known as the Coastal Way or Fv17 – charts a sinuous path along the coast, bucking and weaving along rugged contours all the way to the Arctic.

The Scandinavian nation is blessed with one of the most beautiful yet difficult stretches of coast in Europe. Seeming to wrap itself around the country like a protective shield from the freezing Arctic, Norway's coastline appears to have shattered under the strain, riven as it is with islands and fjords cutting deep fissures inland. Along such a coast, it seems impossible that a road should exist here at all. In short, it seems like a miracle.

It was perhaps appropriate, therefore, that my road trip began, like so many European journeys, at a place of ancient pilgrimage.

Stiklestad is where the story of modern Norway began. It was here, in 1030, that the Christian King Olav Haraldsson was killed by a Viking army. Despite his apparent defeat, Olav and his death became the rallying cry for the spread of Christianity and a turning point in the struggle for a unified Norway, with the battle marking the beginning of the end for Viking Norway and its feuding chiefs. In 1164, Pope Alexander III confirmed Olav's sainthood, and the site of the battle – along with Trondheim's cathedral, where Olav's tomb remains – has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.

Stiklestad was a fitting place for me to begin my journey, because the Kystriksveien that unfurls away to the north also goes to the heart of how Norwegians see themselves and their nation.

Few, if any, countries in Europe overcame such formidable challenges as Norway in settling the land within their borders. Where Norway's leaders through the centuries used the story of Stiklestad to unify the country – building a strong national identity around the narrative of a united, independent and Christian country that had left behind its medieval past – its road builders and pioneers later stared down a forbidding Arctic and sub-Arctic climate and the challenges posed by a beautiful, but inhospitable terrain to chisel out routes like the Kystriksveien.

"We won the land" is something of a national mantra. Museums across the country construct exhibitions around the phrase, telling how Norway was tamed and made habitable. "If Mount Everest was in Norway," Stiklestad historian Mette Larsen told me, "We would have built a road to the summit."