Agnes Árnadóttir is one of the founders of the company Brim Explorer, which owns and operates Northern Norway’s first hybrid electric passenger boat.
Árnadóttir’s story starts in a small fishing village, Húsavík, in Northern Iceland. Her family established Iceland’s first whale watching company. Árnadóttir was an active participant in the company from the age of nine until she moved to Norway in 2008, where she began studying political science at Blindern.
After completing studies, the road went to the Environmental Organization Bellona, where Árnadóttir was a political adviser for three years. In 2016, she was asked to establish one subsidiary of her Icelandic family’s company in Tromsø. During two winter seasons, Árnadóttir operated North Sailing Norway with everything from whale watching, skiing and sailing in Lyngen and expeditions on Svalbard.
Árnadóttir and her colleague Espen Larsen-Hakkebo quickly saw many untapped opportunities in boat tourism in Norway and began to play with the idea of developing and building a specially designed electric boat for sea adventures. It was the origin of Brim Explorer, which in October 2019 launched its first boat «Brim» in Tromsø. The company’s second boat «Bard» is under construction and will start operating on Svalbard in May 2020.
With Árnadóttir’s diverse background in climate and tourism with a focus on climate-friendly transport and energy, her contribution during the Kirkenes Conference will be both relevant and newsworthy for Northern Norway and the Barents region.
