Hurtigruten

The Ministry of Transport and Communications in Norway has set minimum capacity requirements of 320 passengers, 120 berths, and cargo for 150 Euro-pallets.

The current agreement with the privately held company Hurtigruten AS entered into force on 1 January 2012 and expired on 31 December 2019, with an optional 1-year extension.

Vesteraalen began the first round-trip journey from Trondheim on 2 July 1893 bound for Hammerfest, with calls at Rørvik, Brønnøysund, Sandnessjøen, Bodø, Svolvær, Lødingen, Harstad, Tromsø, and Skjervøy.

[citation needed] Before Hurtigruten opened, only Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab was willing to make the trip through the then poorly-charted waters; the voyage was especially difficult during the long, dark winters.

Mail from central Norway to Hammerfest, which used to take three weeks in summer and five months in winter, could now be delivered in seven days.

[5] Encouraged by Vesteraalens' early success, several other shipping companies obtained a concession to operate the route, extended to run between Bergen in the southwest and Kirkenes in the far northeast.

Beginning in the 1960s, the role of Hurtigruten changed, in part because of the construction of a local airport network and road improvements.

In 2015, Hurtigruten was delisted from the Oslo stock exchange after the company was acquired by the private equity group TDR Capital.

[11] In order, northbound: As part of its slow television series, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation transmitted non-stop the Hurtigruten ship MS Nordnorge's 134-hour voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes, which started on June 16, 2011.

[22][23] On 21 October 1962 MS Sanct Svithun ran onto a reef in the maritime area Folda in Nord-Trøndelag because of a major navigational error after leaving Trondheim.