Finlandia arriving in Tallinn 3 June 2013

Eckerö Line is a Finnish

shipping company A shipping line or shipping company is a company whose line of business is ownership and operation of ships. Shipping companies provide a method of distinguishing ships by different kinds of cargo: # Bulk cargo is a type of special cargo that ...

owned by the

Åland Åland ( fi, Ahvenanmaa: ; ; ) is an Federacy, autonomous and Demilitarized zone, demilitarised region of Finland since 1920 by a decision of the League of Nations. It is the smallest region of Finland by area and population, with a size of 1 ...

-based

Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö is a Finnish holding company based at Mariehamn in Åland. The principal constituents of the group are: * Birka Cruises, a company operating Baltic cruises from Stockholm in Sweden. Services terminated in 2020 and th ...

. Eckerö Line operates one ferry between

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

(Finland) and

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju '' ...

(

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

). Eckerö Line should not be confused with the similarly named Eckerö Linjen, also owned by Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö, which operates ferry services between Berghamn in the Åland Islands and

Grisslehamn Grisslehamn is a locality and port located on the coast of the Sea of Åland in Norrtälje Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden. The locality had 249 inhabitants in 2010. The name Grisslehamn was first mentioned in a document from 1376 about th ...

in Sweden.

History

In 1992

and Birka Line founded a jointly-owned subsidiary ''Eestin Linjat'' to operate MS ''Alandia'' on the fast-growing route between Helsinki and Tallinn. The name of the company was reportedly selected for practical reasons as it required the change of only a few letters to re-paint Eckerölinjen into Eestin Linjat (or vice versa). Similarly the livery of Eestin Linjat was very similar to that of Eckerö Linjen. However, due to the use of the word Eesti ( Estonian for "Estonia") instead of the Finnish word Viro, the Finnish public presumed the new company was an Estonian one. This was made worse after the ''Estonia''-disaster in 1994 when many people in Finland began associating Eestin Linjat with EstLine, owners of the ill-fated MS ''Estonia''. As a result of this Eestin Linjat changed its name into Eckerö Line in 1995 (with the livery of the ships made identical to those of Eckerö Linjen). At the same time a second ship, MS ''Apollo'' (a sister ship the Alandia and Eckerö Linjen's Roslagen) was added to the route. In 1998 Eckerö Line acquired its first (and only) genuine

cruiseferry A cruiseferry is a ship that combines the features of a cruise ship and a Ro-Pax ferry. Many passengers travel with the ships for the cruise experience, staying only a few hours at the destination port or not leaving the ship at all, while ot ...

, MS ''Nordlandia'' which replaced both of the previous ships sailing on the route. The Nordlandia also brought with it a slight change in livery as the

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...

used in the ship's hull was changed from a heavy serif into a light, italicized sans-serif. In May 2004 Eckerö Line purchased the freight/passenger ferry MS ''Translandia'' as a second ship for the Helsinki–Tallinn route in response to the high demand for freight capacity after Estonia joined the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

. In May 2019 it was confirmed that P&O had sold European Endeavour to Eckerö Line. She was renamed MS Finbo Cargo and is to act as a complement to Eckerö's current vessel the Finlandia on the Helsinki to Tallinn Route commencing in June berthing at Vuosaari on the outskirts of Helsinki. She will join the service following another dry docking with an increased capacity of 366 passengers.

Fleet

Current fleet

Former ships

Ships that are still in use are marked in green.

References

External links