The construction of Viking Glory is proceeding on schedule. The keel laying ceremony took place on 3 June 2019 at the Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry shipyard in China.
The new climate-smart ship will begin operating along the Turku-Åland-Stockholm route under the year 2021. Passengers can make bookings for the ship as of December 2019.
The keel laying ceremony is an old shipbuilding tradition, in which coins are placed under the keel of the ship to bring luck during the construction phase.
In the ceremony, the first section of the ship is lowered onto the keel blocks on which the lucky coins have been placed.
The keel-laying ceremony symbolises the birth of the ship; the point at which the first section is complete and the other sections can then be joined together.
Once the ship is ready for launch, the lucky coins under its keel are recovered and stored until they can be later welded to the base of the ship’s mast.
The climate-smart ship Viking Glory will offer passengers unprecedented archipelago views and has already stirred a great deal of interest in Finland and Sweden. The name competition held in April produced more than 22,000 name suggestions.
The new ship will have a passenger capacity of 2,800, 922 cabins and a crew of approx. 200. She measures 22.6m in length, her gross tonnage 63,800 and her freight capacity is 1,500 lane metres.
