After the hurtigruten career, the ship served as a training ship until 1960 under the name SS Gann, when it was sold to the Netherlands for scrapping.
The Hurtigruten ship SS Finmarken was built at Trondhjem’s mechanical workshop and handed over to Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab in 1912. Until 1956, the ship was in regular rotation in Hurtigruten traffic, transporting goods and people along our coast.
It was the SS Finmarken that officially opened Risøyrenna in 1922, and during World War II the ship helped transport forced evacuees south when the occupying forces wanted to implement scorched earth tactics.
The ship had many similarities to the steamship SS Richard With, which had been built three years earlier.
The whole ship was still not scrapped. The section on the aft deck, which contained the 1st place smoke lounge and the 1st place music lounge was sold and transported to the small village of Beekbergen in the Netherlands. There, the section again changed owners and functioned for many years as accommodation for visitors to the riding center Riant.
It was not until 1998 that the Hurtigruten Museum was made aware of the section and initiated the process of bringing the SS Finnmarken’s salons section home to Norway and to Stokmarknes, which was made more difficult by the fact that the section had to be transported through an area of protected forest in order to be able to leave the Netherlands.
On 23 October 2003 at half past four in the morning, SS Finmarken’s salons finally came home to Stokmarknes.
Once at Stokmarknes, the section was washed down. The work was done on a voluntary basis. The tarpaulin in which the section was originally wrapped was replaced with a container building that withstood the elements better.
The dream of a large, new Hurtigruten Museum, with the two VDS ships SS Finmarken (1912) and MS Finnmarken (1956) as the main attraction, was still far off.
After many years of working quietly, another big leap forward came for the SS section in 2012. With funding in place and two interested professionals with special expertise, Morten Hjelløy and Arne Lannerstedt, the work of rebuilding SS Finmarken’s salons really got underway.
The salons had been richly decorated with wood carvings that would bring to mind Viking ships, the royal sagas and the Viking Age. These were created by woodcarver and sculptor Daniel Hagerup. Here, the animal ornamentation and sling patterns found in the stave churches were combined with illustrations from, among other things, the Battle of Stiklestad. The interior had a clear connection to the louis seize style, which originated in France in the early 1700s. There were also elemets of jugendstyle
The original furniture had been dismantled and ended up at the Maritime Museum in Bergen at the time. Much had been lost, including what had not ended up in Bergen. The beautiful wood carvings had to be recreated, wallpaper, textiles and much other furniture as well. Rust and asbestos had to be removed, more modern floors that had replaced the original had to be removed. Many local firms were hired to restore, repair and recreate.
The project had to many challenges along the way; how to get mahogany for all the finishes? Wood of tropical origin has major restrictions.
The wood carvings were another challenge. A large 3D scanner was purchased, and through a series of trips to Bergen, the original wood carvings were scanned. These 3D scans were milled out, and the expert fine work carving out each individual motif by hand could be started. The traditional craftsmen Per Stegarud, Øyvind Fjellstad and Arthur Johansen took care of this crucial work.
Finding someone who could reproduce the wallpapers was also a significant challenge. After much searching, an older workshop was finally located in Germany that had the correct equipment for recreate the wallpapers in the salons as they were, originally.
The work of recreating the salons as they appeared on their maiden voyage in 1912 involved a great many people, both throughout our elongated country and down on the continent. Professionals with unique expertise, enthusiasts and volunteers worked long hours to bring the saloons in the old steamship Finmarken back to their former glory. When the section was finally hoisted into place in the new Hurtigruten Museum at Stokmarknes in January 2020, it was the culmination of 22 years of intense work for enthusiasts, project managers and many years of prime mover at the Hurtigruten Museum, Sten Magne Engen.
Today, the section is part of the permanent exhibition at the museum, and can be experienced by visitors all year round.
For even more information, feel free to go to Youtube and watch the documentary film that was made about the project. (Norwegian)