Hurtigruten
Page 3
Continued from page 1
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LEFT: The Hurtigruten ship
Kong Harald, built in 1993, has 490 berths and 50 car spaces. |
Routes/map
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Hurtigruten's coastal voyage starts in
Bergen, Norway at 8 p.m. (summer) or 10:30
p.m. (winter). Over the next seven days, it stops at 34 ports, including "The
Blue City" of Sortland and such well-known towns as
Trondheim, Bodø, Tromsø, and Hammerfest
(which claims to be the northernmost town--as opposed to village--in the world). The final stop, the port and mining town of Kirkenes,
is around the northern tip of Norway, close to the Russian border.
The ship then retraces its route to Bergen.
Ports that were visited at night on the northbound voyage are daytime calls in
the southbound direction, which means you can see all 34 ports during a
roundtrip cruise without losing any sleep.
Port calls vary in length from 30 minutes or
less to several hours. In summer, Hurtigruten offers shore excursions that last up to
seven hours. (You leave the ship, board a bus, and join the vessel later
at another port.)
If you don't have the time or money for a roundtrip cruise, you
can buy a 7-day northbound or 6-day southbound voyage. The airport at Kirkenes,
the northern terminus for Hurtigruten, offers flight connections to various
cities (including Oslo), and a catamaran ferry will take you to the nearby
Russian port of Murmansk.
Other Hurtigruten routes
In addition to the traditional Northern Cape route, Hurtigruten
offers adventure and expedition cruises to Spitsbergen, Greenland, and the
Antarctic. Click the Hurtigruten link on
this article's Web links page for
more information.
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