Finnish Shipping — A Nordic Exception?

Abstract

The Finnish economy has for centuries been dependent on seaborne transport. In some periods, such as the mid-nineteenth century and the 1970s, Finland also emerged as an important shipping nation in international cross-trades. In the mid-1970s, Finnish tonnage was the sixth largest in the world in per capita terms — just after the Scandinavian countries (Karonen, 1992; Kaukiainen, 2008b). Nevertheless, compared to the other Nordic countries, it was a minor player in international shipping and, subsequently, it has fallen even further behind. In 1987, for example, the freight earnings of Finnish shipping were about one-fifth of those of Norway and about one-third of those of Denmark and Sweden (Ojala and Saarto, 1992, p. 27).