The Swedish icebreakers have worked twice as hard this winter

CRAFT

The Swedish Maritime Administration's icebreaker Atle at the quay in the port of Luleå. The Swedish icebreaker fleet departs from Luleå except for the largest, Oden, which has Helsingborg as its home port. Archive image.

Pontus Lundahl/TT

The Swedish icebreakers have doubled their efforts compared to last winter – both in hours worked and in the number of ships that received help.

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This winter the ice was also thicker and harder than in recent seasons.

The Swedish Maritime Administration currently has five icebreakers in operation: Ale, Atle, Frej, Oden and Ymer.

Annika Hjelmsten, operations operator at the Swedish Maritime Administration's icebreaker management, has reviewed the efforts of the state icebreakers so far this season. The statistics apply from the beginning of December 2023 until the middle of April this year.

Throughout last season, December 2022 to May 2023, 614 vessels received icebreaker assistance. But even now, before the current season is over, the figure is 1,051 ships.

– It will be a doubling, says Annika Hjelmsten.

Doubled amount of hours

This year, the season also started early in December, normally it starts later in the same month and then lasts a bit into May.

In terms of hours worked, the icebreakers were in operation for 2,820 hours during the last season. They have already been running for 4,716 hours and a doubling is expected there as well.

The Swedish Maritime Administration has three categories for ice conditions: mild, normal and severe. The last few years have been classified as mild, but the current season has the class normal.

– But the ice that has been there has been very walled and hard. It has been windy for several periods and then the ice has been compressed and the thickness has been built up in different rounds, says Annika Hjelmsten.

New ice breaker

The Swedish icebreaker fleet is growing. A sixth icebreaker has been bought used from Norway this year. The 18-year-old ship is named Idun in Sweden after the pattern from Norse mythology and, like the others, will depart from Luleå.

– Idun is bigger than Ale but smaller than the others in the Atleklassen and will cover a niche where we lacked an icebreaker, says Annika Hjelmsten.

FACTS

Icebreaker

The Swedish Maritime Administration has the five state icebreakers Ale, Atle, Frej, Oden and Ymer. The state icebreaker Idun, which was bought this year, will be added to the next season. If necessary, external resources such as tugboats are hired.

This year, the external resources have increased significantly. The Swedish Maritime Administration has chartered five external boats.

Close to ten million tons of goods are shipped to and from the ports in the Gulf of Bothnia per winter, which corresponds to approximately one million trucks.

Sweden and Finland have been working closely on ice breaking for some years now. This may mean that it is sometimes a Finnish icebreaker that assists the traffic to a Swedish port and vice versa.

Source: Maritime Administration