With operations starting in 2005, it flew to Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger using a Jetstream 32 and an ATR 42, which is wet leased from Danish Air Transport (DAT) and Helitrans.

[6] The airline is named after the play The Wild Duck (Norwegian: Vildanden) written by Henrik Ibsen, who was born in Skien.

Vildanden was founded on 23 November 2004 by 18 local investors who wanted to start commercial scheduled flights from Skien Airport, Geiteryggen.

[9] In October 2004, a contract was signed with Haugesund-based Coast Air, who would operate Jetstream 31 aircraft between Skien and Bergen.

[13] Norsk Hydro, who have a lot of employees in the Grenland area, stated that they could not start using Vildanden because they had an agreement with SAS Braathens' services from Sandefjord.

[16] By September, the most popular departures were being booked full, and Vildanden asked Coast Air for a larger aircraft, with about 30 seats.

[9] An agreement with Danish Air Transport (DAT) to operate an ATR 42, with a capacity of 48 seats, was signed in mid-October.

[17] To be able to breach the agreement with Coast Air—who still had a wet leasing contract, but were not able to put into operation a larger aircraft—the company Skien Lufttransport AS was created, and it purchased all the revenue and passenger rights from Vildanden.

Coast Air chose to continue operating the route between Bergen and Skien in their own name, and used the same aircraft and slot times.

[22] This was rejected by Vildanden—on the contrary, the company was in dire need for more capital, and issued a private placement for NOK 4 million in December 2005.

The company had since the start been losing money, and needed extra capital to get through the rough until it could make an operating profit.

[25] During 2006, the ridership increased, and Vildanden started becoming more aggressive against Widerøe, which was flying to Bergen from Sandefjord Airport.

[26] The ATR-42 turned out to be too large; from 1 July, operations was taken over by the Czech company Air Aurora, with a smaller 30-seater Saab 340.

At the same time, the management of Vildanden had to raise new capital equal to at least half the companies accounts payable, which was NOK 8 million.

The Federation of Norwegian Aviation Industries announced that they would consider reporting the subsidies to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) for violation of the European Community competition law.

[36] As a response, the Federation of Norwegian Aviation Industries reported the municipality to ESA, and demanded that NOK 20 million in illegal subsidies be repaid by Vildanden and the airport operator.

The company stated that they had been considering having a stop-over at Moss Airport, Rygge on the Stockholm flights, but instead decided to terminate the route.

[40] During the winter of 2008–09, Vildanden was forced to land at Sandefjord Airport 50 times due to weather closing Geiteryggen.

[41] In March, Widerøe started a marketing campaign to attract people from Grenland to use their routes at Torp.

Local Liberal Party politician Gustav Søvde stated that he was opposed to Widerøe advertising in the Telemark press for their services.

[44] On 11 November 2009, the German pilots on a flight from Skien to Bergen announced that only 28 of the passengers, without baggage, could take the ride.