TheBaltic Sea is crossed by severalcruiseferry lines. Some important shipping companies areViking Line,Silja Line,Tallink,St. Peter Line andEckerö Line.
Tallink and Viking Line operate competing cruiseferries on the routesStockholm -Turku and Stockholm -Helsinki, calling in Åland (Mariehamn orLångnäs). Additionally,Tallink sailsStockholm -Mariehamn -Tallinn. Tallink, Viking Line and Eckerö Line compete on the Helsinki - Tallinn route, which is also the busiest route in the Baltic Sea, travelled by over 6 million people in 2008.[1] The fact that this route is so busy (a further 270,380 people flew betweenTallinn Airport andHelsinki Airport in 2018) has led to calls for aHelsinki–Tallinn Tunnel.
Baltic routes are mostly served by new ships purpose-built for the routes. Older cruiseferries from the Baltic serve as ferries on other seas, or in some cases, ascruise ships.
Viking Line and Eckerölinjen also operate short routes from Sweden to Åland, sailing onKapellskär -Mariehamn andGrisslehamn -Berghamn.Birka Line, owned byEckerö, also operates short cruises out of Stockholm.
Generally,GTSFinnjet of 1977 is considered to have been the first cruiseferry, she was the first ferry to offer cruise-ship quality services and accommodations, and the first generation of cruiseferries operating from Finland to Sweden were highly influenced byFinnjet's interior and exterior designs. After the fall of theSoviet Union the route connecting Helsinki toTallinn became highly lucrative, which led toEstonia-based companyTallink to grow and rival the two long-established companies (Viking Line and Silja Line). Eventually, Tallink purchased Silja Line in 2006.
The size of Baltic cruiseferries is limited by various narrow passages in the Stockholm,Ålandian and Turkuarchipelagos, meaning ships that traffic these routes can't be much larger than 200 meters. The single narrowest point isKustaanmiekka strait outside Helsinki, although ships making port at the city's west harbour do not have to pass through the strait. Viking and Silja Line have wished to keep their terminals in the South Harbour, however, as it is located right next to the city center. The longest ships to maintain scheduled service through the Kustaanmiekka strait wereMSFinnstar and her sisters with a length of 219 meters. The longest ship to have ever navigated through the narrows pastSuomenlinna sea fortress wasMSOriana (260 m), but that was only possible due to extremely good weather conditions.
The expansion of theEuropean Union has limited the growth of the industry as duty-free sales on intra-EU routes are no longer possible. However, asÅland is outside theEU customs zone, duty-free sales are still possible on routes making a stop atMariehamn or other harbours on the islands. Another popular destination isEstonia with its lower taxes on alcohol.
The ferries have been criticized because of the low prices of alcoholic beverages which encourage passengers to become drunk and act irresponsibly. Due to the relatively cheap price of the cruises and availability of duty-free alcohol (which makes it considerably cheaper than on "land" as both Finland and Sweden have a relatively strict taxation of alcohol) many big parties involving vast amounts of alcohol consumption are held on the ships.[2]
Many Finns also buysnus from ferries as its sale is illegal in Finland due to EU regulations.
Travelling by cruiseferry has been a significant experience for many middle-aged Finns from their childhood and youth, exciting and a little bit sinful. Tens of thousands of Finns along the decades have made their first trip abroad on a cruiseferry. In the first decades, when fashion phenomena arrived in Sweden significantly earlier than in Finland, Stockholm showed people what Finland would look like after a couple of years. Later, travelling by cruiseferry has become a more mundane, family-friendly way of travel, where people can enjoy being together and sit at a ready-made table but still not always choose the cheapest alternative.[11][12]
According to journalistRiku Rantala, a cruiseferry trip is still a manifestation of Finnish culture, like a part of modern folklore: "The ferries offer escapism, glamour and a promise of adventure".[13]
In the early 20th century it was possible to take a personal car over theBaltic Sea as cargo on a passenger of cargo ship, with about twenty cars lifted onto a ship by acontainer crane. Passenger ship traffic over the Baltic Sea started improving in the 1950s, when theNordic Passport Union came into force in 1954 and the number of personal cars in Finland started increasing despite the need forimport licenses.[14] However, the Finns were averse to driving in Sweden because of theleft-hand traffic until 1967 when Sweden too switched to right-hand traffic. Traffic bycharter buses from Finland to Sweden and thereafter to middle and southern Europe also increased since the 1950s.[15][16]
When car ferry traffic across theØresund strait betweenDenmark andSweden started, the Finnish Car Club, the Road Traffic Association and the Finnish Truck Association started pressuring shipping companies to improve car ferry traffic between Finland and Sweden. The first car ferry connection between Finland and Sweden was a route over theKvarken, the narrowest part of theGulf of Bothnia, fromVaasa toUmeå, where the shipKorsholm III of the shipping company Ab Vasa-Umeå started trafficking in December 1958. A group of shipping companies having cooperated for decades, the FinnishBore and SHO-FÅA (laterEffoa) and the SwedishRederi AB Svea found each other in this regard too and founded a joint company named Oy Siljavarustamo - Ab Siljarederiet in 1957 to handle the ferry traffic. The passenger steam ship SSSilja fromTurku and the cargo steam ship SSWarjo fromHelsinki were not car ferries as such. Siljavarustamo ordered its first car ferry in 1959, when a competing shipping companyVikinglinjen had entered the market with its car ferry SSViking, which first trafficked fromGaltby inKorpo viaMariehamn toGräddö inNorrtälje, until its traffic switched toPargas in Finland toKapellskär in Sweden.[15][14][16]
The ship MSSkandia was built in theWärtsilä shipyard for Silja's Turku-Norrtälje route in 1961, which was the first ship in Finland to have a roll-through car deck with aft and bow gates.Rederi AB Slite converted its cargo ship MSSlite to a car ferry in 1959 to traffic between Mariehamn and Simpnäs in Sweden.[16] In 1964 Slite received the recently completed car ferry MSApollo, with its red-painted sides bearing the marketing nameÅlandspilen, meaning "the Åland Arrow" inSwedish. The fourth cruiseferry company wasÅlandsfärjan founded in 1963, with its first namesake ferry having been converted from the 1933 ship SSBrittany trafficking over theEnglish Channel. It started traffic between Mariehamn and Gräddö in Sweden.[16] In autumn 1964 and 1965 the shipWappen von Hamburg of the SwedishStena Line trafficked between Turku and Stockholm, first under the nameJätten Finn and then under the nameMacFinn, with its highlights being a dance restaurant,bingo androulette.[17][18] Stena Line also transported passengers in summer 1966 betweenKemi andLuleå with its small shipAfrodite.[19] In 1966 Vikinglinjen, Slite and Ålandsfärjan now known as SF-Line founded a common marketing companyViking Line and adopted the red colour of Slite'sApollo as the theme colour of all their ships. Soon also Siljavarustamo was discontinued and replaced with a joint marketing company between three shipping companies calledSilja Line in 1971.[14] Before this the group's four companies had been marketing their car ferry trips under the simple nameRuotsinlaivat ("Ships to Sweden"), including "train-ship-train" packages in cooperation with theFinnish andSwedish railway companies.[20][21]
The international truck traffic needed cruiseferry traffic on the Baltic Sea more and more in the 1960s, because the truck traffic had increased after the buying power of the Finns had strengthened and Finnish export trade had been directed to the western market instead of theSoviet Union after thewar reparations had been paid in full.[16] Since the national holiday law 1960, the amount of free time the Finns had had increased to 18 to 24 days per year. Also the frequent immigration to Sweden in the 1960s increased need and demand for cruiseferry travel. On national holidays and in summertime the cruiseferries were packed withSweden Finns coming to visit their relatives. The newspaperHelsingin Sanomat described the elbow tactics of deck passengers on fully-booked night trips on cruiseferries. According to the writer, politeness on a ferry was a crime, because if you were polite you were left without a seat, much less a cabin: "If you even after this acted politely, you were left without food, drink and snacks".[22] Off-season, the ferries attracted passengers by even offering deck tickets for free to spend money on board ontax-free shopping and restaurant services.[14] Mere deck tickets were enough for many: instead of expensive cabins, many people on night-time ferry trips either kept awake for the entire night or slept on indoor chairs or insleeping bags on the outer deck or in the corridors.[23][16] JournalistMaija Dahlgren wondered in the magazineSuomen Kuvalehti in 1971 how passengers who had come to the ferry just for the travel had to endure raging, vomiting, shouting expletives and crazy partying, while the ferry crew could do nothing more than futilely spread their arms about it.[24]
Along with the cruiseferries, Swedish people also started to get interested about visiting continental Finland, but especially about short alcohol-infused pleasure trips to theÅland islands and back.[14]Eckerö Linjen had transported passengers and cars to Mariehamn fromGrissleholm in Sweden already since 1960, and for summer 1961 Effoa experimented with a fast passenger traffic connection from Stockholm to Mariehamn on thehydrofoil shipSirena.[16] After ten years, traffic between Sweden and Åland was joined by the Ålandian companyBirka Line in 1971[25] and the Stockholmian companyÅnedin-Linjen, named after the TV seriesThe Onedin Line, in 1973.[26] Birka Line'sMSBirka Princess became known as the fictional cruiseferryFreja from the Swedish TV seriesRederiet (1992-2002).[27]
When the main selling point of the cruiseferries in the 1960s was fast and cheap passage over the sea, this was overshadowed by relaxed entertainment on board in the 1970s. This was influenced by the 24-hour rule which had come into force in Finland at the turn of the decade: a trip abroad had to last at least 24 hours before the passengers had the right to bring tax-free alcohol and tobacco bought on board to Finland. So the ferries started trafficking from Helsinki to Stockholm in 1972 to lengthen a two-way trip to over 24 hours. The first ferries to depart from Helsinki were Silja Line'sMSAallotar andMSSvea Regina, and in 1974 Viking Line brought their own ships to the route, the German-builtViking 5 and theCanadian-bought 1967 shipViking 6.[28] At the same time, conference trips among corporations and organisations became a new business for the ferries: the 1975 Silja Line shipsMSSvea Corona andMSWellamo on the Helsinki route had conference rooms for 150 people.[14]
Tax-free products on ferries were sold in small on-boardkiosks in the 1960,[16] until the first tax free stores were opened on Silja'sMSFennia and Viking Line'sMSApollo in 1970. MSFennia also had aswimming pool for the first time. At the same time the firstnight clubs appeared on the ferries. The firstdiscotheque on Viking Line's ships was under the car deck of the 1979 shipMSTurella. In the 1970s the ferries also started havingball pits for children.[29][30][31]
In the 1980s the size of the cruiseferries grew rapidly: in 1993 the total grosstonnage of the Finnish cruiseferries was over 84 percent larger than in 1980, even though the number of the ferries had diminished by 28 percent from 43 to 31.[32] The shipping companies renovated their ships at a fast pace as it was economically feasible: after a few years of use, the ships could be sold for more money than they had originally cost, usually to foreign buyers.[16][33] Also the number of passengers grew twofold during the 1980s, up to over 11 million passengers in 1990.[34] The selection of services also grew, and the ferries became popular entertainment centres, competing more with spa hotels than with other ways of travel across the sea, with swimming pool departments and visit by top artists. In 1987 40 percent of Silja Line's revenue came from travel tickets, another 40 percent from restaurant and tax free sales and the remaining 20 percent from cargo traffic. The respective figures for Viking Line were about a third each.[14] In contrast, one half of the revenue ofWasa Line was from tax-free sales in restaurants and shops.[16] In 1990,Time magazine listed Viking Line as the ninth largest vendor of tax-free products in the world in a listing mostly consisting of international airports.[34]
Cruiseferry traffic also expanded on theGulf of Bothnia in the 1980s, whereWasa Line had to compete withFolkline trafficking fromKaskinen toGävle (1982-1984) and its successorKG-Line (1986-1989) andJakob Lines trafficking fromJakobstad andKokkola toSkellefteå andÖrnsköldsvik. During theearly 1990s depression in Finland, Wasa Line had full control over the traffic across the Gulf of Bothnia once again after it had acquired Jakob Lines and KG-Line had gone out of business.
In the early 1990s the shipping companies suffered from the bankruptcy ofWärtsilä Marine at a time when both Viking Line and Silja Line had new ships in construction at the shipyard.[16] Getting the bankruptcy clear took 24 years and produced a line of documents 50 metres long.[35] The early 1990s depression hit the business after the bankruptcy of Wärtsilä Marine, and the ferries to Sweden had to compete with ferry traffic toEstonia which had become free after the country had regained independence. One of the companies within the Viking group, Rederi Ab Sally, had gone under Silja Line's ownership because of financial difficulties in 1987. In 1993 Rederi Ab Slite in the Viking group went bankrupt, and the sole company left wasSF-Line, which changed into Viking Line Oyj and discontinued the former marketing cooperative.[16]
After Finland and Sweden had joined theEuropean Union the countries had to fit in with the prohibition of tax-free sales of alcohol and tobacco products in intra-EU transport in early July 1999. The solution was found in Åland's position in travel between Finland and Sweden: the area of the autonomous region is considered a "third area" in indirect taxation, allowing for tax-free sales of products in transport between Åland and other EU member states.[36] In practice, this meant that all cruiseferries between Finland and Sweden have since made a quick stop at Åland to fulfil the condition of the edict. For ferries on northern routes this was not possible, so tax-free sales on the northern ferries ended completely in 1999. Silja Line soon ceased all activities ofWasa Line, but this was replaced byRG Line founded by the Vaasa restaurant and hotel entrepreneurRabbe Grönblom, which ended up going bankrupt in 2011. After this the city of Vaasa and the municipality of Umeå founded a common shipping company, NLC Ferry, to handle traffic over the Kvarken under the marketing name Wasaline on the ferryMSWasa Express which had already trafficked the route before.[37]
Ferries on the Turku-Stockholm and Naantali-Kapellskär routes started using theLångnäs harbour inLumparland on 1 July 1999, which had previously been in passenger ship use in the middle 1970s and was now reopened after renovation. Stopping at Långnäs along the way saves an hour of traffic time compared to the daytime ferries stopping at Mariehamn.[38]
At the turn of the millennium, the cruiseferry companies underwent difficulties also for other reasons than new regulations on tax-free sales. Sales profits started to diminish when Estonia joined the EU in 2004 and Finland had to lower the taxation of alcoholic beverages to avoid excessive "booze hoarding" from Estonia. Silja Line had the most difficulties and ended up sold to the British-American companySea Containers in 2004. However, Sea Containers itself soon went bankrupt and sold Silja Line toTallink in 2006, which was a smaller company than Silja Line but was the most financially stable along the Baltic Sea cruiseferry companies. Maritime professorJorma Taina has estimated that the "huge hotel department stores" on the Helsinki-Stockholm route had come to the end of their life and saw the future of the Baltic Sea transport in theropax ships that were more modest than the cruiseferries and combined passenger cabins with effective cargo spaces.[39] In addition to Tallink and Viking Line,Finnlines also started to concentrate on ropax ships, of which it ordered five from theItalian shipyardFincantieri and deployed some of them on the route from Finland to Sweden.[40] The same passenger group "without need forhumppa and karaoke" was sought bySeaWind Line owned by Silja Line and then by Tallink, trafficking the Turku-Stockholm route from the 1990s to 2008.[41]
Around 2017 Estonia overtook Sweden for the first time as the most popular ship travel destination among the Finns. On the other hand, travel to Finland among the Swedes has increased.[42]
The frequent passenger and car traffic between Finland and Sweden served as an inspiration and development of cruiseferry operations worldwide, particularly from Finland and Sweden to other destinations. The largest and fastest cruiseferry in the world,GTSFinnjet was built at the Wärtsilä Helsinki shipyard in 1977, which trafficked from Helsinki toTravemünde in Germany.[43] Already a decade beforeFinnlines had trafficked to Travemünde andVisby inGotland first on theMSHansa Express fromHanko and then on theMSFinnhansa and theMSFinnpartner from Helsinki.[40] In the early 1990s,Hango Line tried to improve the Hanko-Visby route,[44] and the Swedish company Jetson tried to improve thePori-Sundsvall route previously trafficked by Wasa Line in the early 1970s,[45] but neither of these attempts made it past the planning stage.
The Wärtsilä shipyard's experience in cruiseferry construction starting fromIlmatar,Fennia andNordia in the early 1960s expanded to international cruiseferries in 1968, when a Norwegian shipping company ordered theMSSong of Norway from Finland.[46]
After theSoviet Union had disbanded and the Baltic countries had regained inpendence, new ferry routes started rapidly appearing from Helsinki and Stockholm toTallinn and other coastal cities on the Baltic Sea. After Estonia, Sweden and Finland had joined the European Union the Baltic Sea cruiseferry traffic became an important factor among free travel of tourists, goods and workforce between Finland, Sweden and Estonia. This created a need for other kinds of ships than cruiseferries along the different-length routes on the Baltic Sea, especially after tax-free sales had ended at the turn of the millennium. In addition to cruiseferries and ropax ships, other types of ships also appeared to serve the short route from Helsinki to Tallinn, such asLinda Line'shydrofoil ships andcatamarans[47] andSuperSeaCat'spump-jet express ships. Among the first cruiseferries especially designed for the Helsinki-Tallinn route as the fast 2008 shipMSViking XPRS, which became the ferry to transport the most passengers along the route in the 2010s.[48]
The Baltic Sea cruiseferries and travel on them are a multi-faceted phenomenon of life, which has received diverse criticism, mostly because of environmental reasons. The pollution caused by the cruiseferries was at its worst after the1973 oil crisis when the ferries used heavyfuel oil containing even three percentsulfur. The ferries later switched to lighter fuel oil and other technical solutions were also sought. For example from 1988 to 1990 the ferries'sulfur dioxide emissions were reduced from 300 tonnes to 50 tonnes per year.[49] Navigating larger and larger ships through narrow straits and at tightly-packed piers at city centres has been a subject of discussion both at theStockholm Archipelago and on the Finnish coast.[50] The large cruiseferries are said to bring the wave situations from the outern archipelago to the inner archipelago, which changes the collection of species and furtherseutrophication.[51]
Maritime safety issues become a point for some time every time something happens to the Baltic Sea cruiseferries. The largest controversy, which led to various actions, resulted from thesinking of the MSEstonia in September 1994.
About 60 percent of the state income originally meant for cargo ships and other utilitarian ships, explained withpreparedness, went to "entertainment maritime transit" meaning passenger ships in the middle 2010s.[52]
Tens of people have disappeared from the cruiseferries throughout the decades, almost all of them young men. JournalistRiku Rantala has investigated the matter and has published a four-hour podcast calledM/S Mystery about the matter in 2022.[53]
