King Crab Safari Tour Kirkenes: Where It Starts

The pickup, and why it is worth using

Transfer from and back to your hotel in Kirkenes is included in the trip, and it is one of the more genuinely useful inclusions on any tour of this kind. Kirkenes is a small town but a spread-out one, built along a fjord rather than around a square, and the King Crab pier is a working pier rather than somewhere with a visitor entrance you would find by wandering.

There is a second benefit that shows up repeatedly in what guests say afterwards. The drive is not silent transport. Guests describe the driver giving a proper account of the town on the way out, which means the transfer is doing double duty as an introduction to a place most visitors know nothing about. If you have just flown in, arriving at the pier already knowing why the town looks the way it does changes the trip.

The fallback if you do not pick a hotel

This is the detail most worth reading carefully, because it is the one that goes wrong. Book without naming a hotel and no transfer is arranged for you. What you get instead is a time to be somewhere: 13:15, at the pier, under your own steam.

So the instruction is simple: choose your pickup location when you book. If you did not, or you are not staying in a Kirkenes hotel, then treat 13:15 as your deadline and plan to be there before it rather than at it. A RIB with a small group and a fixed three-hour shape does not have much capacity to absorb a late arrival.

Two addresses, and which one is yours

The departure point depends on the season, and the operator states both. From May to mid-September the safari leaves from the King Crab pier in Kirkenes, at Johan Knudzens gate 1, in the town itself. Outside that period the starting point moves to the Snow Resort at Sandnesdalen 14 in Bjornevatn, a short distance inland from Kirkenes.

If you are booking within the summer window, the pier is your address. If your dates fall outside it, check the confirmation rather than assuming, because the two are not the same place and one of them is not in the town. This is exactly the sort of detail that a pickup quietly solves for you, which is another argument for selecting one.

Getting to Kirkenes in the first place

Kirkenes has an airport, and for practical purposes that is how visitors arrive. It sits at the top right corner of Norway, roughly eight hundred kilometres east of Tromso, and while there is a road, it is a very long drive through country with few settlements on it. Domestic flights connect it to the rest of Norway, and the flight itself is worth having a window seat for.

The other arrival is by sea. The coastal ships that work their way up the Norwegian shoreline terminate at Kirkenes, so a proportion of visitors here have come the whole length of the coast by boat. If that is you, the town is your turning point rather than a stop, which usually means an overnight and makes a three-hour afternoon safari fit neatly.

How early, and what to have with you

If you are being collected, be in the lobby a few minutes before the stated time rather than in your room, because the driver is running a route around several hotels and waiting at one of them delays everybody else by the same minutes. Have your outer layers with you rather than packed; you will put the flotation suit on over them at the pier.

What you actually need is very little. Warm clothing and comfortable shoes are the two things the operator asks you to bring, and everything else that matters is handed to you at the pier. A phone or a camera with a strap, and sunglasses in summer, cover the rest of it.

What happens at the end

The trip does not finish at the pier. After the pots have been hauled the boat crosses the fjord to the boathouse, and the meal happens there, which means the last part of the day is on the far shore rather than back in town. Transport to return you to your hotel is provided once that is over.

It is worth setting expectations on timing. Three hours is the stated duration for the whole thing, transfers included, so this is an afternoon rather than a full day. In the summer months you will step out of the boathouse into what looks like the middle of the afternoon regardless of what the clock says, which catches people out pleasantly.

Why the town is laid out the way it is

One thing that helps when you arrive is knowing why Kirkenes looks so modern for a town with a long history. It was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, bombed repeatedly as a German supply base and then burned during the retreat across Finnmark. What stands today is a postwar rebuild.

That explains the spread-out shape and the absence of an old centre to orient yourself by, and it is part of why a pickup is genuinely worth having rather than a convenience. There is no obvious historic core with the pier at the end of it. The working waterfront and the residential streets are simply arranged along the fjord, and the King Crab pier is a working pier among them.

Before you book

Before you travel

1. Choose your pickup point

   Select your Kirkenes hotel as the pickup location when you book. This step decides whether you are collected or making your own way to the pier.

2. Be ready ahead of time

   Wait in the hotel lobby rather than the room, in the clothes you intend to wear under the suit. The driver is working a route around several hotels.

3. Listen to the run-in

   The drive out doubles as an introduction to Kirkenes, and guests regularly single it out as one of the better parts of the day rather than dead time.

4. Get suited up

   Floating overalls, a life vest, mittens and a balaclava are handed out, and the safety briefing happens before anybody steps aboard the RIB.

5. Return transfer

   Transport back to your hotel is provided once the meal in the boathouse is finished, so there is nothing to arrange for the journey home.