Edvard Petersen - Udvandrere på Larsens Plads (1890)

Thingvalla line was a

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 ...

founded by Danish financier, industrialist and philanthropist Carl Frederik Tietgen in 1879 in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...

. It maintained a route between Copenhagen and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

calling at Kristiania (present day Oslo) and

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a seaside resort city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 112,000 as of January 2020, f ...

on the way. At its peak, it had ten ships in its fleet. In 1898, the company was bought by

DFDS DFDS is a Danish international shipping and logistics company. It is the busiest shipping company of its kind in Northern Europe and one of the busiest in Europe. The company's name is an abbreviation of Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (literal ...

, another Danish shipping company, and the name was changed to Scandinavian America Line.

History

Thingvalla Line was one of several large companies which were established at the initiative of Carl Frederik Tietgen. The aim of the company was to provide a direct route between

Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swe ...

n ports and North America. Prior to its establishment, most Danish passengers had been conveyed by German shipping companies, such as Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actiengesellschaft and

North German Lloyd Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL; North German Lloyd) was a German shipping company. It was founded by Hermann Henrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann in Bremen on 20 February 1857. It developed into one of the most important German shipping companies of t ...

. The new company established a ferry terminal at

Larsens Plads Larsens Plads (English: Larsen's Place) is a waterfront in Copenhagen, Denmark, which runs along the Zealand side of the main harbour from the Nyhavn canal in the south to the Nordre Toldbod area just south of Langelinie to the north. The name refe ...

on the Copenhagen harbourfront, a site which had been a combined shipyard and lumberyard until 1870. It was from here that its ships departed calling at Kristiania and

before crossing the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

. By including the Norwegian ports, the Thingvalla Line became an important competitor not only to the German companies, but also British based companies. In favour of the new company, apart from the obvious advantage of providing a direct route, were their Scandinavian crews and a more homogeneous composition of passengers. Less favourable was their use of smaller and slower ships as compared to the larger German and British companies. This did not seem to affect the largely Scandinavian passengers as the line soon became quite popular. What was much worse for the company was that it had a series of accidents which became a setback for the line. Most notable were the sinking of the S/S ''Danmark'' in 1889 and the collision in 1888 of the S/S ''Geiser'' and S/S ''Thingvalla'', both of which were owned and operated by the Thingvalla Line. In 1898, the company was acquired by

which changed the name to Scandinavian America Line.

History

See also

References

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