Book news: The North Sea Bridge: Ferry Connections Between Scandinavia and Britain 1820-2014

New year, new book. Alright, technically it's not a book of the new year, as The North Sea Bridge was published in December 2019, but my own copies reached me yesterday, so we're starting off the new decade with a book review.

Kalle Id
The North Sea Bridge: Ferry Connections Between Scandinavia and Britain 1820-2014
Ferry Publications: Ramsey 2019.
160 pages.

Back in 2014, I was asked to write an article series for Ulkomatala on the history of passenger shipping between the Nordic Countries and Britain, as these services ended that year with the closure of the Esbjerg–Harwich link. What I expected to be a four-part series turned out to run for a ridiculous seven installments and resulted, amongst other things, an interview for a radio travel programme by the Finnish national broadcaster Yle. The idea of expanding and translating the article series into a book was born soon afterwards, and here we are.

I hate taking these photos during the winter; in Finland this time of the year, natural light is too nonexistent for these to turn out good, no matter how hard you try.

Reviewers so far have been kind enough to say that the book fills an important gap in (english-language) maritime history and without false modesty I have to agree: this is the first time the story of the Nordics-UK passenger services have been told in their entirety, in detail, and drawing from source materials in all the Scandinavian languages, Finnish and English. Most of the material in the book has been available before in print in one of these languages, but never before has all the relevant information been put in print in a language most readers from all the relevant countries can be expected to understand. On top of it all, experts from all the relevant countries helped me along the way in some form or another.

Illustrations are drawn from numerous private and museum collections and are in excellent quality (even if I say so myself).

The book is available to buy numerous booksellers, and naturally also directly from the publishers here.

For those of you who live in or near Finland, I have a limited number of copies to sell directly, for the relatively modest price of 30 euros plus postage. If you are interested in buying a copy, drop me an email at kalle.id@gmail.com

Kships will return soon with an entry that isn't about books I've been involved in, I promise!