Our Story
Forkbeard, son and successor of Bluetooth, and expert navigator.
No, really. Bluetooth was an actual viking king, and his son, who eventually succeeded him, was named Forkbeard – and coincidentally, he was an expert navigator.
Forwarding to present time, the world has been thoroughly mapped down to street view level, and everyone with a smartphone is an expert navigator. At least outside. Because inside buildings, we still navigate like our viking ancestors, through signs and (God forbid), asking for directions.
Nowadays, Forkbeard is a Norwegian startup company, set out to conquer the final frontier of navigation: The great indoors! Our aim is to become the indoor GPS! That’s right, we deliver the blue dot for smart devices, indoors – your imagination provides the rest.
Think of how many services that use Google Maps -now think of the opportunities indoors, with better navigation, better flow, better decisions, basically better experiences.
Our industry is in its infancy, with a lot of focus on innovation – but Forkbeard has quite the head start.
Our owner, Sonitor, has over 20 years of experience in accurate, reliable indoor positioning through IOT tags. They figured out how to do the same for smart devices – and the doors opened for mass adoption and scalability of the solution. Enter Forkbeard.
Basically, those 20 years were spent wrangling with the hardest to master, but also most rewarding technology when it comes to indoor positioning: Bluetooth combined with ultrasound technology. And because of that, we can provide unparalleled accuracy, reliability, scalability & privacy – right out of the box.
Our Management

Arne Øyen
CEO
Arne has an extensive background ranging from software development to technology and commercial management (CEO/VP), with experience from Kongsberg Group and Schlumberger. He holds a MSc in Engineering Cybernetics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology.



Kristen Tinus Torp
COO
Kristen has more than 10 years of international executive experience in establishing and running operational units within emerging industries. He holds a B.A. in Management in addition to M.A. studies in HR from University of Newcastle.

Palle Furum
CCO
Palle has rich experience in commercial management. Prior to joining Forkbeard he held leadership roles in Cyber security startup Defendable AS and Gartner. He holds a BSc in Sales and Marketing from Northern Illinois University.

Endre Bakka
Engineering
Endre’s professional background is in embedded software development and technology management. He has worked with Sonitor and Unicef and holds an MSc from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Per Kristian Gjermshus
Cloud
Per Kristian has a background in architecture, software development, cloud and technology management. He has worked with Sonitor, Microsoft, and Nokia, and has an MSc from the University of Oslo.

Cyril Antille
Smartphone & SDK
Cyril has a background in digital signal processing and software development. He has worked with Sonitor and Schlumberger WesternGeco. He hold a MSc from the University of Oslo and BSc from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL).