23 APR 2018: Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway always has a full schedule, but she took time for a special flight to New York to launch the future direction of the Hurtigruten cruise line as the expedition ship MS Fram readied to sail to Canada.
The company is partnering with the Queen Sonja Print Awards to make the polar exploration ship MS Roald Amundsen “the ship of graphic art,” she said at a shipboard reception. The Queen is quite an artist and printmaker herself and some of her works based on scenes in Norway’s Arctic will be among the 600 pieces ranging from watercolors to woodcuts in the ship that launches in the spring of 2019.
It’s part of a tradition for Hurtigruten—whose name means express route– founded in 1893 to carry passengers to Norway’s remote western and northern coast, and has since expanded to explore the world. But in a sense the announcement marks a new future direction for Hurtigruten.