Noorderlicht - World's Only Ice-Bound Ship-Hotel

Noorderlicht – A more than a century old steel schooner has the unique distinction of being not only the World’s Northernmost Hotel but also of being the World’s only Ice-bound Hotel which when not ice-bound is an active seafaring vessel.

The so called hotel-ship is a regular ship which plies in the Arctic Ocean along the Svalbard archipelago during the summer months and in the Barents Sea along coastal Norway in the autumn. It is however during winters it achieves the remarkable yet simple USP of becoming an ice-bound hotel and serves as a base camp for sleigh rides for tourists exploring the frozen Spitsbergen and the surrounding areas.

From February to May each year, the ship is purposely moored in Tempelfjorden fjord in the island of Spitzberg, Svalbard archipelago in Norway, where it gradually becomes ice-hotel as the water around it freezes. This simple but unique idea was first implemented 10 years ago. The ship has had a chequered past. Built in 1910/11 as a three-masted German schooner christened ‘Kalkgrund II’, it was originally used as a lightship at Flensburg, Germany. In 1919 it was inducted into German navy and remained with them as a lightship-cum-pilotship till 1963 when it was de-commissioned and sold for use as a residential ship for expatriates.

In 1967 the ship was sold to a sailing club and towed to Möltenort in the Kiel Fjord to serve as club house. Due to poor maintenance it started decaying. Its fate from 1986 till 1992 is not known but in 1992, the current owners discovered the decaying ship in Friesland and bought it for renovation. Its rusty hull was stripped, completely restructured and provided with two masts. The ship was made sea worthy for cruising in the high seas and was rechristened with Dutch ‘Noorderlicht’ meaning "Northern Light". In the initial year after renovation the ship cruised around Spitsbergen during summer and in winters the ship sailed to the sunny Canary Islands and the Azores.

In 2004 at the suggestion of Norwegian tour operator, ‘Basecamp Explorer Spitsbergen’, the ships hull was strengthened and interiors refurbished to make it suitable for the extreme cold weather conditions and also to provide amenities to sled dogs and parking for snowmobile which bring passengers and rations when the ship is snow-bound in the midst of icescape which to stretches to miles and miles of irregular packs of ice and snowy peaks.

The British Sunday Times has twice named the ship as one of the “5 places to visit before you die”.

Image Source: Google Street View - This is the street view which first attracted my attention to this unique Hotel/Ship. My first impression was that GSV had captured rescue operation of some ship which had accidentally got stuck in the Ice. Further search on the WWW gave me true idea about it. The ship in above image is located at 78° 24' 18.5754" N, 16° 59' 31.4628" E and it is moored every winter within couple of hundred metres of this location, making it the Northernmost Hotel in the World.

View location in Google Earth / Google Maps and Street View

Source of Information and more information;

• Dutch Wikipedia (English Translation)
• The Guardian, UK
• Official Web site of the ship - Noorderlicht
• Official Web site of tour operator - Basecamp Explorer Spitsbergen

Credits: I am thankful Basecamp Explorer Spitsbergen for furnishing the images (except GSV) used here.