The very close call with the cruise vessel Viking Sky outside Hustadvika on 23rh March pinpoints a new challenge for Norway, whereby cruise vessels are not restricted to summer months and venture far North (Viking Sky had been to Alta).

If Viking Sky had grounded on Hustadvika, we would probably have seen more deaths than in the Estonia accident in the Baltic sea in 1994 (about 850 people perished). If further north or close to Svalbard, even higher death toll.

Norway needs to rethink this much more carefully! It is also about the rescuers’ risk exposure, the risk for the SAR helicopters is not negligible. Professor Ingrid Utne and myself have written an article about this in Dagens Næringsliv (in Norwegian).