2013 World Rowing Coastal Championships in Helsingborg, Sweden

Next weekend it’s time for the 2013 World Rowing Coastal Championships, held in the beautiful city of Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden. While the Swedish organisers on their website state that these championships are held between 15 and 18 August, FISA writes in an article about this event that it’s held on 15 and 16 August. Below is a promotion video about Helsingborg and costal rowing in the city, which is organised by the local rowing club, Helsingborgs Roddklubb.

Old Swedish Rowing Medal on eBay

The other day HTBS-colleague Greg Denieffe pointed me in the direction of an old Swedish rowing medal on eBay. It was handed out as a winning medal (‘1 Pris’) for coxed fours on 19 July, 1908, at a regatta held in Vaxholm, a small town in the outer parts of the Stockholm archipelago. The organiser was the local rowing club, Vaxholms Roddförening, and on the medal you can see an out-rigged coxed four and the town’s coat of arms (as it looked then) with the Vaxholm fortress, which was first built in 1510. It was some time after the 1650s that the fortification got its round stone tower which is still in the town's coat of arms today. The fortress was not only kept as a military protection (against the Russians), as the sea entrance to Stockholm, it was also a customs-house where duties were paid by outside merchants going in to the Swedish capital.

Rowing had been practiced for centuries in the archipelago – it is also known that there were rowing races in the 1860s and 1870s – before the first organised rowing club saw the light of day in Vaxholm in 1883. Soon, other rowing clubs were founded in the area, but they all only lasted for a couple of years. However, in 1889, Vaxholms Roddförening was founded and rapidly grew to be one of Sweden’s most successful rowing clubs before the Second World War. It was the first Swedish rowing club to compete in Finland, where in 1902, the club raced and won against the local rowing club in Helsinki and some Russian clubs. Its members became Swedish champions, Nordic champions and represented Sweden in the Olympic Games in 1912, 1920 and 1936.

I am sorry to say that I have not been able to locate any information about this 1908 regatta. The most famous regatta organised by Vaxholms Roddförening is Distanskapprodden (‘The Distance Race’) which is a 14,500-metre (9-mile) long race between Stockholm and Vaxholm in inrigger coxed fours. This race was first organised in 1894, but then by another rowing club, Hammarby IF. Between 1905 and 1907, and then from 1919, it has been organized by Vaxholms Roddförening. Take a look at some of the more recent racing photographs here.

There was already a famous rowing race in 1844 between the Vaxholm fortress and the centre of Stockholm. That year, a Russian expedition, which was doing scientific measuring of the Baltic Sea, had received the permission by the Swedish king Karl XIV Johan to visit Stockholm. When the vessel, a paddle steamer, approached Vaxholm fortress it did not only neglect to stop to be inspected, it broke the code of honor by not saluting the Swedish flag which was raised on the fortress. This annoyed Colonel Anders Israel Panchen, the old commander of the fortress, who ordered a canon-shot to be fired in front of the Russian vessel. The Russians still ignored the order to stop whereupon Colonel Panchen ordered a second and then a third salvo towards the paddle steamer. The third shot hit the wheel and made the vessel unmanageable.

A Russian Navy officer and his crew rowed over to the fortress to ask what was the matter? Colonel Panchen informed him that they had insulted the Swedish flag by not saluting it. The Russians rowed back to the paddle wheeler, but suddenly their boat changed its course to row into Stockholm to complain to the king. Panchen ordered a boat of his best oarsmen to make haste and row into the castle to be the first ones to inform the king about the incident. Despite the Russians’ long lead, the Swedish gig managed to catch up and pass the Russians and was first in to the castle to inform the king, who was said to be very pleased with his sailors’ rowing…. well, so the legend goes….

Fun With Church Boats

Just before New Year's, I received the last of the 2011 issues of the Swedish rowing magazine Svensk Rodd, edited by my dear friend Per Ekström. Although, the content is mostly about autumn events and articles by the Swedish rowing stars Frida Svensson and Lassi Karonen to mention a few, for the cover, editor Ekström has chosen a funny photograph taken from the Water Festival held in the village of Orsa in the province of Dalecarlia in July 2011. The only thing I know is that the rowers managed to pull the water skier 600 metres.

The province of Dalecarlia, or Dalarna in Swedish, has many clubs rowing in church boats, a descendant of the boats built by the Vikings. Mostly the church boat has ten pairs of oars. Here is a short clip from 2009 showing a start in this boat type.




Here is another clip showing the church boats from 'above'. The crews are all women. It looks like fun, doesn't it?

Rowing On Lake Sävelången

Above is an unusual ‘rowing’ postcard. The picture is showing pupils of the handcrafts school at Nääs Castle in Floda in the province of Västergötland, Sweden. From 1872 to 1960, the school was renown for its education in different crafts. It was an old tradition in Sweden to educate children from poor families to keep them ‘off the streets’ and to give them an education in traditional woodworks (for boys) and textile and cooking (for girls). The education at Nääs Castle became so famous that, from 1880 to the outbreak of the First World War, people from forty countries around the world would come to the school to take part in special seminars about woodwork, textile, cooking, but also to take part in tending gardens, games and athletics, song and dance. Today, Nääs Castle is a museum.

The postcard shows a boat, probably on lake Sävelången, which is located by the castle, with students from the school, seven boys and one girl, all dressed-up for a particular occasion. If we count the oars, it’s a six-oared gig with a coxswain or boatsteerer. It is the boys, in their ties and berets, who are in charge of the oars and the rudder, and the girl is acting as the passenger of the boat, at least when the photographer is taking the picture. I can well imagine that the girl would demand her turn at the oar, just like other girls and women have taken their turn at the oars if they were living by a lake, a river, or along the Swedish coastline. In the Swedish maritime history, there are many stories about powerful women fishing or trading, plying the oars in a boat going between islands and the mainland.

At the bottom of the card, someone has written ‘Lycka på resan’ [‘Have a good trip’]. The postcard is to a Fröken [Miss] Bernhardina Andersson in Hisingsholm, which is close to Gothenburg. There is no stamp, or date, so it’s impossible to know when the card was sent (if it was sent…). It’s an interesting picture of a time long gone.

A Swedish Offprint On Rowing

On 20 July, I wrote about Ducker McLean's pamphlet Oarsmanship, which thanks to good detective work by HTBS reader Malcolm Cook could be nailed down to The Encyclopaedia of Sport which was published in 1898. The following day, 21 July, HTBS's Tim Koch posted an interesting piece about rowing pamphlets.

Technically, I believe that McLean's Oarsmanship is not a pamphlet per se, but instead a so called offprint, which is 'a separately printed article that originally appeared in a larger publication'. Nowadays, printed offprints are rare in the publishing business, instead you can probably read them on the web!

In my little collection of rowing books I have an offprint in Swedish about the sport of rowing. A famous encyclopedia in Sweden is Nordisk Familjebok, which first edition was published in 1876-1899, which was followed by a couple of more editions. During 1937 and 1949, a beautiful 7-volume (4,000 pages) sports encyclopedia was published by Nordisk Familjebok. The section about rowing, which was written by head editor of the encylopedia, Åke Svahn, and published in 1943. The offprint, Roddsport, is 40-page long article with very nice illustrations in black/white (remember this is during the 1940; and I am also a little surprised that the publishing company managed to get hold of that much paper to print this during World War II!).

Not surprisingly, Åke Svahn was deeply involved with rowing in Sweden. A year later, in 1944, when the Swedish Rowing Association celebrated the Association's first 40 years - it took the Swedish oarsmen a long time to get organised - Svahn together with Sten Thunvik published a brilliant work on rowing in Sweden, which actually goes beyond the history of rowing in Sweden. It is a pity that En Bok Om Rodd [A Book On Rowing] is written in a minor language, otherwise it would be regarded as a major work in the literature on rowing. The easiest way to try to explain its greatness is to call the book a Swedish version of Chris Dodd's The Story of World Rowing.

More entries on rowing pamphlets will follow.