This is not a cruise ship
Start with what changes everything. MS Polarlys serves thirty-four ports between Bergen and Kirkenes, all year, in both directions. She carries twenty-six cars. She carries freight. She takes aboard locals who ride three hours to visit a sister and step off at the next quay. The coastal route has done this work since 1893, and the traveller who takes it joins a routine rather than watching one.
That costs something and it earns something. You will call at three in the morning at a port whose name you had never heard, with no announcement and no ceremony, because the mail does not wait. In exchange you will see a coastline nobody is staging for you.
The ship
She left the Ulstein Verft yard, in Norway, in 1996. Eleven thousand three hundred and forty-one gross tons, 123 metres by 20, seven decks of which six are open to guests, 225 cabins, 619 berths and 64 crew. A 2021 refit converted her to hybrid propulsion, with lithium-ion batteries and new engines. She carries three wheelchair-adapted cabins — one of the few lines in our catalogue to publish that figure, and it deserves credit.
What the fare covers
Breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Torget restaurant, tea, filter coffee and water through the day, Wi-Fi, and the expedition team's talks. Excursions are booked and paid separately. On gratuities and on alcohol the line says nothing in the coastal fare: we assert nothing either way, and your advisor will have it clarified before your deposit.
What the calendar sells
Four hundred and thirty departures are on sale on this page as we measured: one hundred and sixty-eight in 2026, two hundred and twenty-nine in 2027, thirty-three in 2028. It is the largest ship page on this site. The lengths tell you everything about the nature of the service: three days ninety-eight times, four days sixty-five, then six, seven, eleven and twelve days about fifty-two times each. The short formats are segments — you board at one port and land at another. The eleven or twelve days is the full Bergen-Kirkenes-Bergen round trip.
Bergen recurs two hundred and fifty-nine times, Kirkenes one hundred and eighty-five, Trondheim one hundred and thirty, Tromsø one hundred and seventeen, Svolvær sixty-five. If you are after the northern lights, it is the northern segment that counts, not the total length.
What changed at the line
Hurtigruten and HX became two separate companies when acquisitions completed in February 2025, under a consortium of Arini Capital Management, Cyrus Capital Partners and Tresidor Investment Management. Hurtigruten keeps the Norwegian coastal route, this ship's route; HX runs expeditions elsewhere in the world. Both brands have a page on this site, and they should not be confused at booking time.
The other ships on the route
MS Richard With and MS Kong Harald run the same route and each carries close to seven hundred departures. What separates them is the ship, not the itinerary: the age of the hull, the cabins, the dining room. The the line's own page explains the route as a whole.
