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Published: December 31st 2014
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We thought we had all the courtesy flags we needed for the countries we were going to visit this season. We were wrong, we found out that we needed another one for the Åland Islands (pronunciation: 'oland). We had to actually look up information about this group of islands. What we discovered was that this group of islands is an autonomous Swedish speaking region of Finland which is located at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothia in the Baltic Sea (this is the part of the Baltic that goes straight north and separates Sweden from Finland). The Åland Islands consist of 6,500 islands and lies 24 miles east of the Swedish coast. The Åland Islands have their own flag, their own government, postage stamp and are guaranteed representation in the Finland Parliament. For much of their history these islands were part of Sweden. With the development of czarist Russia these islands were taken over by Russia in 1809. As a result, along with all other parts of Finland, they became part of the semi-autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1854 during the Crimean War Sweden with the help of Britain were able to capture the islands and return them to
Swedish control. In 1917 the residents of this area pushed to be ceded by Sweden but were not successful. Some of the reasons for this was the anti-Swedish sentiment of the Finns. Finland declined to cede the islands and instead offered them autonomous status. The residents did not like this offer and took this issue to the League of Nations. The decision was for Finland to retain sovereignty over the islands but that they should be an autonomous territory. With this ruling Finland had to ensure that the residents of the Åland Islands could maintain the Swedish language, culture and local traditions. During the 20
thcentury the residents realized that a connection was beneficial and they became disappointed with support from Sweden causing people here to still have a connection with Finland. The ships from the Åland Islands during WWII were quite well protected as they sailed for both the Allied countries and Germany so neither side attacked as they did not know whose cargo they were carrying.
When sailing through this area it was confusing to understand why people were speaking Swedish, had the Swedish flag colored banners flying in front of their homes, but yet others had the
flag of Finland as well as their own Åland Islands flag hoisted. Once we read the history of this area and the struggle of this area between Finland and Sweden it became at least
a little clearer.
I believe we mentioned this in an earlier blog dealing with the connection between Sweden and Finland. We met a couple in Finland and had an interesting conversation about their connection with Sweden. Bob was explaining how Americans for the most part are unaware of the history of this part of the world except maybe for its connection with World War II. He then said that he was surprised by how many wars were fought in this area by the Swedes. The gentleman immediately corrected Bob and said that the officers may have been Swedish but all the fighting men were Finn’s as we must remember that for much of its history, Finland was under Swedish control. Another fact that surprised us was that Finland sided with Germany during World War II. The explanation for this is that Finland had no great love for the Russians and as the old saying goes “the enemies of my enemy are my friends”. When we
The Pommern, a Windjammer Built in 1903
was built in Glasgow but was part of a German shipping company, is now a museum in Mariehamn were in St. Petersburg at the siege Museum we saw a number of posters depicting the Finn’s as evil monsters along with the Germans.
With the number of islands here we could have spent a lot more time, but we had to keep our eye on the weather in order to make the crossing to Sweden so only took a few nights to anchor out and then visited the town of Mariehamn which is located on the largest island in the Åland Islands.
In looking up information on this town we found out that there were two people, architect Lars Sonck and building engineer Hilda Hongell that had quite an impact in this area. We took a wander around the town to view some of the 44 buildings still remaining of the over 100 that were built here. They were not all of the same style. Some were built as large common use facilities such as the navigational school and church while a number of wooden homes were obviously designed by the same person. These still survive from the early 1900’s and it was good to see they are still well maintained giving character to the town.
In checking the weather we found that there was a great window for our crossing to Sweden so took our cue and left Mariehamn to continue our journey west to the next country on our travels in the Baltic. We left Mariehamm at 7AM and arrived in the Swedish archipelago by 12:30PM –it was a great day with the sun out and a nice breeze for sailing. As it was still early we continued further through the island chain for a few more hours before settling into a very comfortable anchorage at 4:30PM. We thoroughly enjoyed a pleasant day of sailing, but as always it was great to get a good ‘hook’and a quiet evening at anchor. Traveling farther this day also made it a shorter trip the next day into Stockholm which we will fill you in on in the next blog entry.
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