Where are the ships now?

Useful and useless facts about Hurtigruten

-The Hurtigruten ships sail with a average speed of 15 knots, and use 11 days on each roundtrip, Bergen - Kirkenes - Bergen.

- At any given time there are 11 ships in the route, plus the ship "Fram" sailing cruise at home and abroad all year round.

- The company, Hurtigruten ASA, has 1800 employees with a turnover of approx. 4 billion NOK a year.

- Hurtigruten is northern Norways biggest company for apprentices.

- Norway is the only country in the world to have this operation.

- The newest vessels are using about 200 tons of fuel worth 1 million NOK each roundtrip.

- Hurtigruten is covered by the EEA-area regulations and must be out on open tenders on a regular basis, where everyone in the EEA may participate and compete for business.

- At the start in 1893, Hurtigruten received a annual state aid on 70.000 NOK. Today they receive 640 million NOK annually.

- The first Hurtigruten-ship was named "Vesteraalen" and sailed from Trondheim to Hammerfest, July 2nd 1893. The captain onboard was Hurtigruten's own founder, Richard With.

- The captains pay in the 1880/90s was about 120 NOK a month, plus approx. 7% of the net freight.

- Hurtigruten already began in 1894 to attract tourists.

- In 1896 (3 years after Hurtigruten was founded) Richard With started a tourist route from Hammerfest to Svalbard with the ship "Lofoten", and he build his own hotel with room for 30 guests at Advent Bay on Svalbard one month before the tourist route began. This became the world's northernmost hotel. The tourist route was closed two years later and the hotel was sold to a mining company. The cape where the hotel stood was named Hotel cape, and later became Longyearbyens airport.

- After Richard With became a member of the Parliament, the Parliament desided in 1911 to start dredging the lane named Risøyrenna. Earlier Hurtigruten sailed through Tjeldsundet, but when Risøyrenna opened in 1922 it opened up to traffic through Vesterålen, and two of the ships started sailed through Vesterålen, while three ships still sailed the old route through Tjeldsundet.

- In 1914 the route was extended to as we know it today: Bergen - Kirkenes. 10 ships sailed.

- Hurtigruten had no passenger department on land until 1914. Ticket sales before that happened in the goods terminal on the pier, where it was listed on a piece of paper and handed over to the ship's captain at departure.

- The state was from the year 1917 to 1924 financially responsible for Hurtigruten.

- In 1921 the State aid was revoked for a short period.

- The route has been changed many times during Hurtigruten's life, and these places have earlier been a port of call for Hurtigruten: Gamvik, Finnkongkeila, Kongsfjord, Alta, Gibostad, Havnvik, Hasvik, Grønøy, Indre Kvarøy, Evenskjer, Kabelvåg, Narvik, Lødingen, Melbu, Skutvik, Vikholmen, Beian, Bessaker, Haugesund and Stavanger.

- Hurtigruten's easternmost port is Vardø. The westernmost is Florø, the northernmost is Mehamn and the southernmost is Bergen.

- In 1964 the cost of a 3 course dinner at 1.class was 11 NOK.

- Until 1892 the Hurtigruten-vessels was divided into 1. 2. and 3. class.

- Today's MS Vesterålen had after she was newly building a blue belt around her hull instead of the red one.

- Midnatsol and Nordnorge is the two most used ship-names.

- The norwegian information-company, 1881, used the founding of the company VDS and Hurtigruten in one of their earlier
TV-commercials: Click her for video. (norwegian)

- Today's ships have stabilizers that are reducing up to 75% of the ships movements.

- Hurtigrutens horn-signals when arriving in ports: Northbound gives 1 long, 1 short, and 1 long signal. Southbound gives 2 long, 1 short, and 1 long.

- MS Nordlys is sailing with MS Nordstjernen's original three-toned horn, while MS Kong Harald sails with former MS Polarlys' horn.

- In 2010, Hurtigruten started selling its own red and white wine. The wine is produced in Portugal, in the winehouse Jose Maria da Fonseca, and is sold only aboard the Hurtigruten ships.

- In 2011, the "Hurtigruten - minute by minute", NRK2's 134 hours-long live broadcast from MS Nordnorge, was written in the Guinness World Records Book as the world's longest live television documentary.
Link to the documentary: Hurtigruten - minute by minute.

- One of the former main tasks of Hurtigruten was carrying of mail, and they had their own post office and mail functions on board. But in the 1980s, Hurtigruten fell out of the mail-carriage, and the ships stopped using the post-flag. The practice of the flag-use was reintroduced in the 90s and Hurtigruten is now sailing with the Norwegian post-flag again.

The postflag, Hurtigruten