Scandinavia: Drones, Fiords and eVTOLs
Scandinavia is not a region to conjure up images of drones and eVTOLs flying overhead. What with all that Winter snow and ice, rugged mountainous areas and long, deep, daunting fiords, the terrain doesn’t seem suitable for the sensitive technologies required.
Yet and surprisingly, Scandinavia refuses to be left behind in the green aviation revolution with various companies already staking a claim. That Viking ancestry which once ruled the seas is now resurfacing and looking to the skies.
So, who are some of these intrepid companies?
Let’s start with drones and A for Aviant. Founded in 2020, the company’s founders met at the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an ideal background for such a business.
Based in Trondheim, Norway, these founders are Lars Erik Fagernaes, Herman Oie Kolden and Bernhard Paus Graesdal. The company emerged as a response to the Covid-19 lockdown and the need to deliver essential healthcare.
An inaugural flight took place in February 2021 which led to setting up a successful drone delivery service for a major Norwegian dairy producer, quickly followed by the transportation of medical supplies including sample specimens and equipment for St Olavs Hospital in Trondheim. More recently, Aviant received EUR1 million funding from ‘Innovation Norway’ adding to the existing EUR2.3 million investment via a seed round led by Luminar Ventures and Bring Ventures last September. At present, the company has conducted more than 2,500 autonomous flights, covering over 35,000 km.

The Aviant Team (Credit: Aviant)
Aviant sees itself as an important player in the European drone market. Focus has now turned towards enhancing their flagship service, Kyte, for the lucrative home delivery market.
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Compared to other drone delivery companies like Wing or Manna, Aviant’s craft are able to fly up to 120 km in a straight line, resulting in a significantly higher delivery range. Kyte is able to deliver within a 30 km radius for return flights, rather than the 2–3 km range of other providers.
Customers are able to request delivery using the Kyte App, selecting from a range of groceries, meals and medicines. After the order is placed, the drones are loaded at its home base, before autonomously delivering the order and then returning. To date, Kyte has completed deliveries covering over 4,000 km, with an average delivery time of 24 minutes.
Aviant’s CEO, Fagernaes, remarked, “Door-to-door drone delivery is a hot topic, but most commercial attempts have been limited to small, open areas such as a single park or technology that limits the radius to 2–3 kms, where getting a commercial last-mile delivery service up and running has proven extremely difficult. That changes with Kyte.”
He continued, “We have a large delivery radius, the permits to operate, and no requirements for pilots or spotters along the route. We are actually delivering food, groceries and medicine by drone to people’s doorsteps in Norway right now.”
Given the mountainous and remote Norwegian areas, once the weather is navigated, BVLOS drone delivery is ideal, especially when rural road closures are common in Winter. Fagernaes pointed out, “We are able to provide people in remote and hard-to-reach areas with the groceries and medical supplies they need, directly to their doorstep, with no traffic restrictions and minimal climate emissions.”
Aviant intends to open a second base in Norway later this year, allowing it to serve 20,000 to 30,000 remote holiday homes with door-to-door deliveries. The company’s vision is to bring drone home delivery to most of Norway, as well as other European markets. The company is certified under EU regulations to operate autonomous flights within the Union.
Anett Berger Sørli, Bring Ventures Investment Manager, commented, “We invested in Aviant because we see drone delivery as central to the future of logistics, and being able to launch Kyte within such a short timeframe shows how driven this team is to lead us to that future.”
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Perhaps, better known is Sweden-based drone company Everdrone, after becoming famous last year for saving a man’s life with a rapid delivery of a defibrillator. This was the world’s first.
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The incident has greatly helped Everdrone to extend its life-saving ‘First on Scene Solutions’ (FOSS) delivery, by employing drones to fly automated external defibrillators (AED) and provide support to first responders around Sweden, in particular, to the vast Västra Götaland County.
The company has been working with the region’s Administrative Council since 2020, and that co-operation has now been assured with a new round of financing for 2023 and beyond.
Everdrone is dedicated to public safety and emergency response and epitomises the “Drones for Good” culture. Working with local governments and first responder organisations, the company’s FOSS now covers a population of 340,000.
Mats Sällström, the company’s CEO, said, “We are not stopping there. We are committed to expanding the capabilities of our drones and improving our services. Our current fastest delivery time is two minutes and 27 seconds, and we aim to improve it further by reducing flight time by up to 60 seconds in the coming year. This is just the beginning.”

Mats Sällström (Credit: Everdrone)
Magnus Kristiansson, Västra Götaland’s Innovative Platform Manager, added, “Now we can develop the functionalities even more including system innovation and increased know-how on air space regulations. I am confident that AED deliveries, as well as additional benefits from drone deliveries, can be implemented on a more permanent basis.”
As part of their continuing cooperation, Västra Götaland is examining extended use of Everdrone’s LiveView application, a real-time aerial video stream of emergency scenes that provides responders with vital, time-sensitive information they can immediately put to use on arrival. Trials show that Everdrone’s delivery of AEDs is much faster than ambulances, where rapid response time is critical, with the chances of survival decreasing between 7 percent and 10 percent each minute a stopped heart cannot be restarted.
Out-of-hospital heart attacks account for around 20 percent of all deaths in developed nations, due to mortality rates of nearly 90 percent in those situations. Cardiac arrest outside of clinical environments strike around 275,000 patients in Europe each year and 350,000 in the US.
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Sweden remains in the spotlight with drone delivery start-up Aerit. Last December, it completed a two week pilot project covering households from Gräddö and Tjockö across a 38 square mile area in Norrtälje, Sweden. The BVLOS flights provided on-demand grocery and product delivery to residential homes in the area.
Funded by Sweden’s innovation agency, Vinnova, the project was a joint effort between Aerit, ICAx, Research Institutes of Sweden and Norrtälje Kommun to evaluate the benefits of drone delivery as well as study public reception to the services. The deliveries took place over six days in extreme weather conditions including snow and temperatures below ‑10°C.

Aerit Nimbi Drone (Credit: Aerit)
Alex Perrien, CEO of Aerit, enthused, “The trial has been an unqualified success. We reliably provided access to goods and services in harsh weather conditions to locations that normally require several modes of transportation to reach. We have replaced short car and boat trips to the store with Nimbi flights, reducing travel time while improving safety and sustainability.”
These Nimbi delivery drones, designed and built by Aerit, are battery-powered with a maximum payload capacity of 10 lbs. The craft features a winching system that allows for both package pickup and drop-off without the need for supporting infrastructure.
Founded in January 2021, Aerit’s accomplishments include regulatory approval for operations under the EASA SORA framework and the successful completion of Sweden’s first commercial drone delivery of food in October 2021. The company has been launching further delivery services around select areas of Sweden during this year.
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Not to be outdone, Denmark has also carried out drone delivery trials going back to 2019, after the country’s HealthDrone project was formed supported by a DKK30 million Innovation Fund to cover a three-year pilot project.
This led to various trials including flying blood samples and medical equipment between Odense, Svendborg and Ærø as part of a program to integrate drones in to the Danish health care system. Such deliveries are expected to save around DKK200 million a year. Denmark’s Leading healthcare organisation, Falck, is particularly enthusiastic about the future of drone delivery.
Jakob Riis, CEO of Falck, commented, “As an active partner in the Danish healthcare system, we are deeply involved in developing innovative systems to find solutions to improve the country’s healthcare and make us more effective to help patients. Drone delivery is a groundbreaking development.”

UAS Denmark Test Centre (© Michael Yde Katballe)
Meanwhile, the UAS Denmark Test Centre offers production and test facilities in their 1,900 km² segregated airspace. The centre is located at Hans Christian Andersen Airport in Odense, where Danish and international companies, research institutions and the Danish Defense can test and develop their UAS operations.
Aarhus University offers 2,100 square metres of research facilities for complex technology research and includes one of the largest drone cages as well as experimental wind tunnel labs in Europe. Denmark is also home to a strong national cluster for robotics, automation and drones named ‘Odense Robotics’.
Even Iceland became involved in drone delivery. In fact, it was the first Scandinavian country, after company Aha.is offered deliveries back in 2018. Three years later the company was awarded the SA Confederation of Icelandic Enterprise prize for the environmental initiative of the year. Unfortunately, no further news of the company has appeared since.
On to eVTOLs and Swedish company, Jetson Aero, manufactures one of the better known personal aircraft called the ‘Jetson ONE’.
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Meanwhile, back in February of this year, Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Airport (HCA) from Odense announced a partnership with Copenhagen Helicopters to be the first in the country to build an infrastructure for eVTOLs to fly people between Denmark’s largest cities. The initial aim is to establish a vertiport on top of Odense Central Station and to fly an eVTOL over Funen.
Kim Kenlev, Chair of HCA speculated, “I foresee that in a few years’ time you can take the light rail to Odense Station and from there a flying taxi to Copenhagen or other Danish cities.” He continued, “I see nothing stopping us from flying to cities like Gothenburg, Hamburg or Berlin in the future. Advanced Air Mobility is high on the agenda everywhere, and these cities are within reach of these flying taxis.”
The partnership wants to attract foreign AAM operators to HCA Airport, which already hosts the UAS Denmark Test Centre.
Martin Andersen, CEO of Copenhagen Helicopter, stated, “Advanced Air Mobility offers a whole new opportunity to transport people on a daily basis via the skies. Our calculations suggest that the AAM area has huge potential and could transport 84,000 passengers a day and remove 120,000 tonnes of CO2 from Danish roads by 2035.”

Odense Railway Station
Last month, Eve Air Mobility and Oslo-based Widerøe Zero announced a Letter of Intent (LOI) to extend their existing association by launching up to 50 of Eve’s aircraft across Scandinavia alongside an implementation of the company’s Urban Air Traffic software solution by the end of this decade, to optimise the efficiency of Widerøe Zero’s UAM flight operations.
Andre Stein, Co-CEO of Eve, said, “This closer partnership builds upon a previous Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2021 at the UN Climate Conference (COP26), which aimed to develop eVTOL operations in Scandinavia.”
Widerøe Zero is an air mobility incubator set up for the impending aviation revolution and is owned by the Aviation Group, Widerøe AS.
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Back to Norway and AAP Aviation Group signed a deal with Lilium at last year’s Farnborough Airshow to purchase 40 seven-seater Lilium Jets for their fleet when constructed. The company also intends to develop a network of vertiports and general landing sites across Scandinavia. The airline company says the Jet flights of up to 156 miles will supplement existing regional routes.
The Lilium eVTOL will fly at speeds of close to 175 mph. The manufacturer believes it can scale the design for a version that could accommodate between 10 and 15 seats.
Espen Hølby, CEO of AAP, remarked, “Due to the mix of water, terrain, and mountains, Norway is particularly well suited to regional air mobility. With its vertical takeoff and landing capability, high speed, and regional range, the Lilium Jet can achieve hours of time savings compared with today’s transportation modes.”

Lilium Jet Seven-Seater eVTOL (Credit: Lilium)
So, Scandinavia is no slouch when it comes to Urban Air Mobility, where its rugged and, at times, remote and inhospitable terrain actually benefits both the drone and eVTOL industries.
Not so much the longship, but the electric airship.