The museum’s collection contains a number of interesting objects that are currently not shown in the exhibitions. Some of them are presented in this digital version of our temporary exhibition “Hilda’s perfume – on the soul of things” which was shown in 2020-2022.
To keep busy during free watches and in the doldrums, you did all sorts of things. You built ship models, did skipping and gymnastics, tried fishing and studied algebra. On Pehr Brahe’s last Atlantic voyage 1903-1904, bosun Arthur Oskarsson begun building a violin. Now it is part of the Åland Maritime Museum's collection. Here you can hear the dry strings on Arthur Oskarsson’s violin sound for the first time this millennium.
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There is only one medical instruments case in the Åland Maritime Museum’s collections. It belonged to the legendary Gustaf Erikson – Ålands best-known ship owner. Every master had his own case. Being highest in rank on board also included being responsible for the crew’s medical needs.
The heaviness of that burden is displayed in the story of a serious accident on board the four-masted barque Marlborough Hill, en route from Africa to Australia. Seaman Virtanen slips on the upper top gallant yard. His frozen fingers grips in the air but catches nothing and he crashes onto the deck.
Here you can hear the story of how the master on board recoils at the sight of the badly wounded Virtanen and first mate Paul Lindroos who takes on the role as ship’s surgeon.
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A beauty with a dark past
The mine hits ss Skiftet in the fore. The explosion tears up large sections of the ships hull. Cabins are destroyed, half the dining room is blown up and the mast and steam winch on the forecastle are torn away. A second explosion creates a massive cloud of smoke that engulfs the ship. When the cloud disperses, the steamer, has disappeared into the depths of the Rödhamnsfjärden, including most of those on board.
Nearly 50 years later, among other things, a small egg cup with hand-painted decoration is salvaged from the wreck. Virtually intact, despite its fragile exterior and dramatic fate.
Breakfast for lost souls
With its delicate beauty the salvaged egg cup bears witness to ss Skiftet’s intended purpose. In October of 1908, the ice-breaking passenger steamer was ready to carry the affluent guests who came from Sweden, Finland and Russia to the spa resort Mariehamn in the early 20th century. The ship had first class cabins for 42 passengers, separate saloons for male and female third-class passengers and a dining room.
The outbreak of war in 1914 meant an abrupt end to the flourishing spa town era. Skiftet was commandeered and deployed by the Russian navy. In December 1916 the German navy had transformed the northern Baltic Sea into a mine field. Using mine submarines, they were able to lay mines undetected in the challenging waters around Åland.
At 08:30 in the morning of 14th December 1916, ss Skiftet departs, slightly delayed. Apart from military personnel there are a handful of civilian passengers from Åland, Finland and Russia. Of the 91 people on board, only five will survive. Soon after departure, on Rödhamnsfjärden, Skiftet sails into a mine belt. Eyewitness accounts report how the steamer in a matter of minutes explodes and sinks.
To this day, Skiftet rests on the seabed beneath the modern ferries that daily traffics the same sea route. The small egg cup salvaged from the wreck only has a tiny chip on the upper edge
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Things have drifted ashore and come into use by handy islanders. Houses and sheds have been made from strong and durable wreck wood. Nails and bolts have been reused or sold as scrap. The wavy weather-beaten name plate from a ship called Julie Michels was donated to the Åland Maritime Museum 25 years ago, where it’s been in storage until now. According to the accession notes, it had been hanging upside down in a boathouse in Föglö “since way back”. Perhaps it drifted ashore and was found by someone who could not read.
We know nothing about Julie Michels’ tragic destiny. But what if! What if the name plate is yet a clue in the story of the mysterious champagne that was salvaged from a wreck in the waters near Föglö in the summer of 2010? A few local history researchers have speculated on connections between the name plate and the champagne wreck. Some objects in a museum’s collections remain enigmatic. Elusive clues may nudge in the background but if they can’t be confirmed, there is no story to tell. That does not render the object worthless. Nothing sparks the imagination as much as a mystery, right?
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Some could be bought, but the young sailors make many of the tools themselves, and they pour their hearts and souls into it. On the next voyage, when meeting a new master and ship’s company, both tools and ditty bag serves as a reference. With your handicraft you show what you are good for.
Hard work according to the ship’s rhythm
Holger Stolzman’s tassled canvas bag contains the tools he made himself and used during two round-the-world voyages on board Pommern in the 1930s. His work sailmaker’s glove. An awl. A couple of marline spikes… Once upon a time, he tossed his bag across his shoulder, went aloft and got the jobs done.
For many young men, life at sea were equal parts dream, escape and a chance to get a profession. The ambition was to train to become a mate or master. But on the first voyage most of them were only teenagers. For them it was important to quickly prove you could handle everything from the biggest sledgehammer to the smallest needle.
Tools had to fit perfectly in the hand, but a lot of time was also spent on making them beautiful to look at. Just like the ditty bags, that were decorated with macramé and tassels. One’s handiwork was a way of proving oneself as able and thorough.
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This particular diary belonged to Harry Eriksson, an orphaned 17-yearold from Åttböle in Finström, who singed on Pommern as deckhand in 1933. The voyage took him around the globe – to Port Victoria in Australia and back. Like most sailor diaries it is filled with comments on wind and weather, daily tasks, accidents, fun, sadness, boredom, and not least, what is served up from the galley each day. As the meals were generally quite measly on the sailing vessels it was not unusual for conflicts to arise between the crew and the ship’s steward.
Monday 22nd January 1933
Got stewed beef and potatoes for breakfast and fish patties for dinner. For this reason, we go on strike […]. Soon after First Mate comes and asks if we are serious when we say we intend to strike. This query was answered affirmatively by us. For what reason? exclaims First Mate. For bad food, is the answer.
A diary is direct channel of communication with someone from the past. In content but also in the ink, the blots, the stains, the rips… Ordinary seaman Sven-Erik Bjerking was a fellow crew member of Harry Eriksson’s on Pommern’s 1933 voyage. He writes the following in the introduction to his diary as it was published in the magazine Longitude:
When I leaf through my diary, I meet many different hands, even though I’m the only one who’s written in it. If it is a choppy and uneven hand, I have jotted down letters with ice-cold hands when it’s been cold and frosty. Where the pages are crumpled and the letters blurry, the sea has washed over the ship and found its way into the far-from watertight fo’c’sle and soaked me as well as my diary.
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Ambergris. Musk. Roses and jasmine. Those are the fashionable scents for the early 20th century nobility and higher strata of society. But on Åland, an upper class has never really existed. Each person that climbed the societal ladder had to teach themselves a new way of being. That included Finström-girl Hilda Bergman, who married ship owner Gustaf Erikson, travelled the world and brought the trends of the big world to small-town Mariehamn. A few drops of Hilda’s own perfume remain in her vanity case. Traces of a scent from the 1930s.
Sailors brought luxurious and exotic objects, customs and practises to the small Åland society. The ship-owning families became the island’s nobility. Highest in rank was Gustaf Erikson – the king of windjammers. Gustaf was famous to spoil his young wife Hilda with beautiful clothes and expensive gifts. A sailing ship and a woman are equally beautiful, according to Gustaf. And most beautiful of all is his own Hilda.
Women and shipping
Few Åland women have actually worked aboard ship. Nonetheless have they been of significant importance for the local shipping industry. While the men were at sea, often for years at a time, the women stayed at home taking care of the home and the farming.
There was a clear class divide between the wives of the master mariners, who live comfortably in their villas, and the landless sailor wives, who worked hard in the countryside. But worry and longing was something they all lived with. Communications were done by writing letters. Big and small, love and daily chores were put in writing. But how the wife felt when the tired sailor returned, and how the couple adjusted to daily life together, we can only imagine.
It was fairly common for a master’s or first mate’s wife to join her husband on a voyage. Usually before any children had been born. One of the unwritten rules stated that women on board were to remain aft of the main mast. In that way, contact with the crew was minimised. Women were thought to disturb the daily work on board. According to old tales it was also supposed to be bad luck to have women on board. Tales that lived on, despite changing times.
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Through a direct link from 1935 the film allows us to follow daily life on board sv Viking on a voyage to Australia. The man behind the camera is the young Englishman John Dewhurst, son to a successful family in the British cotton industry. He was one of the young men who, in the early 20th century payed to sign on a sailing vessel for no other purpose than to have an adventure.
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The exhibition “Hilda’s perfume – on the soul of things”
IDEA AND RESEARCH Stiftelsen Ålands sjöfartsmuseum
CONCEPT AND GRAPHIC DESIGN Eva-Jo Hancock/RabalderStoryDesign
TEXT Anna Karlsson
FILM LuvidFilm
FILM DRAMATURGY Michael Hancock
