The west coast of Norway is near the very top of my bucket list, and this video is one of my three all-time favorite drone videos, both for the dramatic footage of the fjords and natural beauty of the glaciers but also for its production quality.

I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for a good drone travel video. Not just because they're cool, or because Cruiseable is about connecting people with new technologies.

No, I like drone videos because they're a new form of storytelling. Done well, drone videos can help convey the sense of a place, albeit it from a few hundred feet in the air. The vantage point alone seems to convey a certain air of majesty and wonder.

One of my good friends moved to Iceland to raise a family a few years back, and one of our contributing writers visited Reykjavik for a recent American Society of Travel Writers Editors Council retreat there. So Iceland seems like it's beckoning and a trip may be in the offing. 

Holland America Line's newest ship, Koningsdam, recently launched, so I was happy to come across this 2-minute 39-second video of a drone fly-by of the ship during her "Shake Down Cruise" in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where air restrictions are not as intense as they are in the U.S. 

The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is among the world's most remote areas, and one of the world’s northernmost inhabited regions. It's known for its rugged territory, ice floes, glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, Svalbard reindeer and Arctic foxes.

Going to Alaska and want to get off the usual tourist trails? This drone video will give you a taste of what you'll find, especially if you travel around the time of the summer solstice. "Solstice" (4:30, high def) from SturgeFilm offers "an aerial wander through the land of the midnight sun."

Here's another drone video gem from Trey Ratcliff of Stuck In Customs, titled, "Beijing From Above, and The Story of How I Was Detained by the Police for flying my DJI Quadcopter" (4:17, high def). It's garnered 1.5 million views since it was published in June 2014. Music, by Jon Hopkins, is called "A Drifting Up."

There's something that's frankly surreal about the video "Floating Over Bora Bora" (4:44, high def) by Trey Ratcliff (aka Robot Trey). It's almost as if you're watching a video game.

But you're not. You're watching a new art form.

Here's a 2 1/2-minute drone video of Holland America's Oosterdam — which I just sailed on last week in Alaska — during a sailaway out of Port Tampa Bay for a Western Caribbean cruise. Some "crazy beautiful footage" of the ship leaving at dusk, as the videography team put it. 

The drone gets closer to the ship than in most cruise ship videos I've seen. The music chosen wouldn't be my first choice. But overall, short and sweet. 

Here's one of the most beautiful hi-def drone videos we've come across, a 10-minute flyover of the the Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco to Marin County. The video runs from Baker Beach across the Golden Gate Bridge to the north Vista Point — some 11,000 feet in distance with the Phantom 3 Professional. (I recently bought a Phantom 4.)

As the comments below the video make clear, these kinds of drone flyovers are becoming harder to do, given the restrictions imposed on their flight by national, state and city parks. (The Golden Gate National Recreation Area is a federal park.) 

A new professionally shot and edited video titled "Nord," captured entirely by drone, was compiled from footage shot in Norway and Iceland in August 2016. It depicts the stunning landscapes, rolling green hills, waterfalls, geysers, crevices and more of these enchanting lands. Wonderful sounds of nature added as well. There's even a cruise ship at the end.

From the Droning Dutchman, who brought us this drone video of Denmark along the Baltic Sea, comes this 3-minute aerial tour of the spectacular French Riviera. The latest video shows beautiful shots of the Cote d'Azur, capturing people boating and paddling in clear waters followed by a scenic sunset. 

I've been thinking this week of finally ordering a drone for my upcoming cruise on Silver Spirit to the Caribbean in two weeks. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Meantime, I recently discovered one of the masters of the drone video artform, the Droning Dutchman. (See his YouTube channel and Instagram and Twitter accounts.) He writes about his latest creation:

At Seatrade in Fort Lauderdale, the representatives from Club Med showed off this short "See Club Med Punta Cana from above" video, with some stunning drone footage of pristine beaches and a premium oceanfront golf course and the new on-site CREACTIVE Playscape by Cirque du Soleil.