| IMO | 9863209 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 30,150 GT |
| Length | 205 m |
| Beam | 23.5 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 378 |
| Crew | 256 |
| Service speed | 18 knots |
| Builder | VARD |
| Yard | Søviknes |
| Launched | 2021 |
| Operator | Viking Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Viking Polaris is a purpose-built Polar Class 6 expedition cruise ship operated by Viking Expeditions, delivered in September 2022 as the second of Viking's two-ship expedition fleet. The dataset row for this hull is one of the thinnest in the whole roster — the spec box above reproduces it faithfully: a launch year, a status and a name, with every dimensional field blank. The research behind this guide fills most of that gap from the ship's delivery reporting and registry-derived records, and the recovered figures are set out in the specifications section below and logged in this batch's notes. What the bare row cannot convey is the ship's significance: at about 30,000 GT and 378 guests she is expedition cruising at a scale only Viking attempted — a full ocean-cruise ship, with an ocean ship's comforts and science facilities, engineered to work in Antarctic and Arctic ice — and she is also the ship at the centre of the most serious expedition-cruising casualty investigation of her decade.
Key specifications
Recovered from the sources cited at the foot of this guide: IMO 9863209; gross tonnage 30,150 GT in CruiseMapper's registry-derived listing (one operator-adjacent source gives 30,264 GT — a variant, not resolved here); length 205 m and beam 23.5 m in VARD's delivery reporting (some listings give 203 m and 24 m); 378 guests in 189 staterooms; crew about 256–260 including expedition staff; maximum speed 18 knots, service speed about 16 knots. She is an ice-strengthened Polar Class 6 vessel, the class notation that certifies her for summer and autumn operation in medium first-year ice. One dating point matters for the dataset record: the dataset's "launched 2022" is her delivery and entry-into-service year. Her actual launch — the float-out of the completed hull — took place on 27 July 2021, a distinction the dataset makes correctly for most hulls and misses here; it is logged in this batch's notes.
Design and construction
Viking Polaris was built for Viking by VARD, Fincantieri's Norwegian subsidiary: her hull was constructed at Vard Tulcea in Romania and partly outfitted there, then completed at Vard Søviknes in Ålesund, Norway, which delivered her on 27 September 2022. VARD describes the design as an ice-strengthened expedition vessel with a longer hull and straight bow for polar work, state-of-the-art fin stabilisers, and U-tank stabilisers — a ballast arrangement that sloshes water across the ship to damp rolling, which Viking's chairman has said model testing showed could cut roll by around half when the ship is stationary. At over 200 m she and her sister were the largest vessels VARD had built. Her expedition hardware is integrated rather than bolted on: an enclosed hangar from which special operations boats are launched through a slipway, a fleet of Zodiacs, kayaks, and two six-passenger submarines, alongside a working science laboratory. Her keel was laid on 1 October 2020, per the detailed ship record cited below.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was floated out on 27 July 2021 and delivered at Søviknes on 27 September 2022. Three days later, on 30 September 2022 in Amsterdam, she was named by her godmother Ann Bancroft, the American polar explorer — the first woman to reach both poles on foot and by sled — in a double ceremony at which her sister Viking Octantis was named the same day by Liv Arnesen. Her name, for the North Star, pairs deliberately with Octantis, the south pole star, across the two ships. Her maiden voyage departed on 3 October 2022, a transatlantic crossing from Cork, Ireland, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, per the detailed ship record cited below, taking her south to begin her first Antarctic season; Viking's own delivery reporting describes her sailing from Amsterdam toward South America for the austral summer after the naming.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2022–present | Viking Polaris | Viking Cruises (Viking Expeditions) |
She has had a single operator and a single name. Her working pattern was set from her first season and defines her career: austral summers in Antarctica, northern summers in the Arctic and North America's Great Lakes, with repositioning voyages between — the same dual-hemisphere programme her sister sails. Viking Expeditions, the arm that operates her, was itself new when she arrived: she and Octantis were its founding fleet, extending a company built on river ships and then ocean ships into a third, expedition, market. No sale, charter or rename has interrupted that single-line career.
Onboard character
Viking Polaris carries Viking's Scandinavian design language into the expedition field: light woods, restrained textiles, all-veranda staterooms for every guest, and public rooms planned around the landscape rather than around entertainment — notably the Aula, a panoramic auditorium used for lectures and science presentations, and a double-height Explorers' Lounge of the type Viking's ocean ships made their signature. What distinguishes her onboard character from her ocean sisters is the working expedition layer woven through that calm: resident scientists aboard as part of the ship's company, a laboratory guests can engage with, and the hangar-and-submarine operation that turns disembarkation in Antarctica from a tender ride into a small fleet deployment. The design proposition — expedition hardware, ocean-ship serenity — is the era-defining idea her class introduced, and the one every large expedition ship since has had to answer.
Major refits and incidents
On 29 November 2022, barely two months after her maiden voyage, Viking Polaris was crossing the Drake Passage from Antarctica toward Ushuaia, on a medical-evacuation diversion after a Zodiac accident the previous day had injured a passenger, when a breaking wave struck her side south-east of Cape Horn. The wave shattered the windows of seven cabins, causing major interior damage: one passenger died and eight were injured. Viking at the time called it a rogue wave; the Norwegian Safety Investigation Authority's subsequent investigation characterised it as a breaking wave in conditions within the ship's design envelope, and found that the pressure of such a wave exceeded what the cabin windows were designed to withstand — and that no classification rule then required them to withstand it. The NSIA recommended reinforcement of the windows on both Viking Polaris and Viking Octantis, and that the classification rules themselves be amended to account for breaking waves against a ship's side. The ship reached Ushuaia on 30 November; her following Antarctic departure was cancelled. No comparably serious incident, and no major refit, is recorded for her since; the window reinforcement programme the investigation prompted is the defining engineering consequence of the casualty.
Sister ships and class
Her only completed sister is Viking Octantis, delivered in December 2021 and built to the same VARD expedition design — same tonnage class, same 378-guest capacity, same Polar Class 6 notation — and named alongside her in Amsterdam in September 2022. The two were, at delivery, the largest expedition cruise ships in the world by a considerable margin. In 2025 Fincantieri announced a further Viking order for two more expedition vessels, described as sisters to Octantis and Polaris, for delivery in 2030 and 2031 from its Palermo yard; those hulls are orders, not ships, and are noted here only to record where the class is intended to go.
Fate and where she is now
Viking Polaris remains in active service with Viking Expeditions, Norwegian-flagged and registered in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, per her ship record — the dataset's "active" status stands. Her career to date is short but consequential: she proved that an ocean-scale expedition ship could be built and filled, and her Drake Passage casualty changed the regulatory conversation about window strength on every expedition ship that followed. Both of those legacies belong to this hull, and both are still unfolding.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://maritime-executive.com/corporate/vard-delivers-viking-polaris-2nd-ice-strengthened-expedition-vessel, https://www.marinelog.com/news/video-nsia-reports-on-deadly-viking-polaris-encounter-with-a-breaking-wave/, https://luxurycruiseconnections.com/cruise-lines/viking-expeditions/ships/viking-polaris, https://www.paxnews.com/index.php/news/cruise/viking-takes-delivery-second-expedition-ship