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Early Years: 1959-1966 Viking Line's history can be traced back to 1959, when a group of sea- and businessmen from the Åland Islands province in Finland formed Rederi Ab Vikinglinjen, purchased a steam-powered car-ferry S/S Dinard from the UK, renamed her S/S ''Viking'' and began service on the route Korpo (Finland) - Mariehamn (Åland) - Gräddö (Sweden). In the same year the Gotland-based Rederi AB Slite began a service between Simpnäs (Sweden) and Mariehamn. In the early 1960's a disagreement caused a group of people to leave Rederi Ab Vikinglinjen and form a new company, Rederi Ab Ålandsfärjan, who began a service linking Gräddö and Mariehamn the following year. Soon the three companies competing passengers between Åland Islands and Sweden realised that in the long run they all stood to lose from mutual competition. In 1965 Vikinglinjen and Slite began collaborating, and in the end of July 1966 Viking Line was established as a marketing company for all three rederies. At this time Rederi Ab Vikinglinjen changed their name to Rederi Ab Solstad, presumably to avoid confusion with the marketing company. The red hull livery was adopted from Slite's Ålandspilen service (to which it had been taken from the colour of the chairman's wife's lipstick!). Rederi Ab Solstad later changed their name to Rederi Ab Sally and Rederi Ab Ålandsfärjan became SF Line. 1967-1985 Because Viking Line was only a marketing company, each owner company retained their individual fleets and could choose on which routes to set their ships (naturally there was also co-ordination on schedules and such). Each company's ships are easy to distinguish by name: all Sally ships had a "Viking" prefix on their names, Slite took their names from Roman and Greek mythologies, while SF Line's names ended with -ella in honor of managing director Gunnar Eklund's wife, whose name is Ellen. During the 1970's Viking expanded greatly and took over Silja Line as the largest shipping consortium on the Northern Baltic Sea. Between 1970 and 1974 Slite and Sally took delivery of six nearly identical ships built at Meyer Werft Germany. These so-called Papenburg Sisters can be considered to be one of the most successful ships designs of all times (the shipyard built three additional sisters for Transbordadores for ship services in Mexico). In 1973 Viking Line started service on the Turku - Mariehamn - Stockholm route, directly competing with Silja Line for the first time. The next year Sally began traffic between Helsinki and Stockholm. For the next decade this route stayed in their hands, whereas on other routes the three companies operated together. By the latter half of the 70's Sally was clearly the dominant partner in the consortium. In 1980 they took delivery of three new ferries, largest to have sailed under Viking's colours, which further established their dominance over SF Line and Slite (although both of the latter did also purchase new ships in 1979-1980). In the early 1980's Sally started expanding their operations to other waters, which became the company's failing as those operations were largely unprofitable and ultimately made Sally unable to invest on new tonnage for Viking Line service. 1985-1993
1993-present The collapse of the other partners left SF Line as the sole company in Viking Line. Unlike their partners they had emerged relatively unscracthed from the financial troubled of the early 90's, but the events also left the company pursuing careful tactics and avoiding risks. It's telling that instead of looking to purchase new or even used ships to replace the ones lost in Slite's bankruptcy the company simply made do with what they had for several years. In the Turku - Stockholm service this resulted in notable drop in quality when the ageing M/S Rosella was brought in to take over from the glamourous and high popular M/S Kalypso that had been sold to Star Cruises. In 1995 SF Line changed their name into Viking Line. Between 1994 and 1996 the company operated a fast ferry service from Helsinki to Tallinn during the summers on chartered catamaran ships. In 1997 they purchased M/S Silja Scandinavia and renamed her M/S ''Gabriella'' for Helsinki - Stockholm service. AIt has been reported that around the same time plans were made to construct a pair of new ships for the Helsinki - Stockholm service so that Viking could better compete with Silja on that route, but the plans were shelved. It took until 2005 for Viking to order a new ship in response to growing competition from Tallink on the Helsinki - Tallinn route. A year later, in October 2006, Viking Line made it known they would soon order another new ship to replace the ageing M/S ''Ålandsfärjan'' on the Mariehamn - Kappelskär route. Current Fleet Ships under construction Former ships Additionally a lagre number of ferries were chartered during the 1970's and 80's for seasonal traffic. See also | ||||||||||||
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