Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #18 September 2015 | Page 27

Mariehamn

adventure set in the tenth century. For the first time, I
get the Viking lifestyle viscerally rather than intellectually. We sail for four hours through a maze of islands
at the bottom of Sweden. It doesn’t take much imagination to populate them with long houses and dragon
boats. All but the very smallest islands are dotted with
summer houses and piers.

By Pete Sutton

The few taxis at Mariehamn ferry port are
whisked away by a couple of travellers ahead of us
and we are forced to walk to the hotel, a trip of around
ten minutes with our wheeled suitcases clattering and
rumbling in our wake. We didn’t nab rooms in the Con
hotel, which was stringently expensive, but instead
in the next nearest hotel, the Savoy, where, it seems,
many of our fellow Con goers are also billeted.

Lines on the water, the ghosts of boats,
show us the way out of Stockholm, a city of islands.
Seagulls play in the wake of the boat, their screaming
cries like the laughter of lunatics. The sun cracks the
clouds, and for a brief glorious moment, it is summer.
I was on my way to Archipelacon, a science
fiction convention on Aland, an archipelago halfway
between Sweden and Finland and an autonomous
region, similar to the Isle of Man in the British Isles.
The locals speak Swedish but identify as Finnish.
The ferry journeys are legendary amongst what
a Brit at Archipelacon disparagingly calls Scandiwegians. Alcohol is a big issue in the Nordic countries,
and the state has tried to make it difficult to purchase
by increasing the price and making it so it can only be
bought in state approved shops. That’s why the ferries
are so popular.
Our boat, the Viking Line’s Grace, boasts the
largest floa ѥ