MS Nordstjernen - last voyages will be on Spitsbergen

(Picture borrowed from
Hurtigruten.)

As I wrote in a previous post, the MS Nordstjernen is to be replaced by MS Finnmarken, which is returning from Australia. This will happen on the 22nd of March 2012. Since her first trip with Hurtigruten, she has sailed 1.500 roundtrips Bergen-Kirkenes-Bergen, a distance similar to 185 times around the Earth. 


The MS Nordstjernen was built for Hurtigruten in Germany, way back in 1955 (in the picture above you can see her being launched). In the eighties she was modernized, and she also got a new engine adding more horsepower to her propulsion.

Fans of the veteran ships of Hurtigruten will be pleased with Hurtigrutens announcment today, that MS Nordstjernen will be seen sailing for Hurtigruten on Spitsbergen when she leaves the Norwegian coast in March 2012. Actually, from 1995 the MS Nordstjernen was used for 14 years along the coast of this island far north of Norway. (Spitsbergen is the biggest island in the Svalbard archipelago). 

From June to August there will be two voyages a week. At the beginning of the season you can actually sail with the MS Nordstjernen all the way from Bergen to Spitsbergen. The same goes for the end of the season, where you can join her from Spitsbergen to Bergen. Check out Hurtigruten's Spitsbergen voyages with the MS Fram and MS Nordstjernen.

Hurtigruten has not revealed any further plans for MS Nordstjernen, so next year seems to be the last for this beautiful ship. If she is to disappear altogether from Hurtigruten, then the "Nordstjernen" name would be a great name for a new ship. Todays MS Nordstjernen is the second ship to bear this name.

In the video below you can see the MS Nordstjernen. Wow, what a beautiful ship! The lines, the way she cuts through the waves... It's a real shame if she won't be seen sailing for Hurtigruten no more. But, the replacing MS Finnmarken will add capacity and more modern standards to the Hurtigruten fleet. I guess most Hurtigruten passengers would prefer a more modern ship than MS Nordstjernen. A least there's the MS Lofoten sailing for some time still, a veteran ship although she is nine years younger than the MS Nordstjernen.