This expedition ship's 1890s-style cabin lets you travel back in time

130 years ago, expedition cruisers braved the Arctic in timber cabins with little more than a lantern and a creaking hull. Now you can spend a night in one.

Somewhere between Norway and the Arctic, on MS Fridtjof Nansen, there is a cabin unlike any other afloat. The walls are clad in timber salvaged from a 19th-century German farmhouse. The ceiling beams smell faintly of another century. Bunk beds wait in the shadows, a stone-effect fireplace glows against the cold, and – if you know where to look – a wooden barrel conceals a hidden bar.

Sleep in bunk beds in the 1896 cabin.

This is the 1896 Cabin, HX Expeditions’ landmark anniversary experience, now fully revealed and accepting bookings. And it’s only €100 (A$162) per person.

In 1896, HX Expeditions’ forerunner set sail from mainland Norway on what would become the first commercial voyage to Svalbard. The passengers slept in rough timber cabins, kept warm by lantern-light, with little between them and the Arctic except iron determination and a creaking hull. The 1896 Cabin is a meticulous recreation of that world – built to mark the company’s 130th anniversary and housed aboard its flagship hybrid-battery ship.

The cabin is a reconstruction of history.

The design team didn’t hint at history. They reconstructed it. The 28-square-metre space packs in more than 20 distinct pieces of period furniture and over 140 individual pieces of reclaimed wood. There are bunk beds and a single, exclusive anniversary bed linen, a vintage wooden toilet seat (authenticity has no limits), a stone-effect fireplace, period maritime objects, and bespoke commemorative robes waiting on your bunk. Oh, and a secret bar hidden inside a wooden barrel.

Every detail has been thoughtfully curated.

Gebhard Rainer, CEO of HX Expeditions, said the cabin was always meant to honour their origins.

“We hope it gives guests a real sense of what life at sea was like 130 years ago,” he said. “History, after all, is best remembered when lived.”