Recent months have seen Europe’s ferry and rail industry responding to the travel uncertainties created by the Coronavirus pandemic. In the spring, Stena Line permanently axed two Scandinavian ferry routes: Frederikshavn to Oslo and Trelleborg to Sassnitz.

Both routes have a long history. Frederikshavn to Oslo operated without interruption for 40 years. DFDS creatively filled the gap by adding a Frederikshavn stop on its existing Copenhagen to Oslo route. This extra stop adds a couple of hours to the journey time and the daily departures from both Copenhagen and Oslo have thus been brought forward from 16.30 to 14.15.

The ferry from Sassnitz to Sweden, often dubbed the Königslinie in German or Kungslinjen in Swedish (Kings’ Line), was used by Lenin on his remarkable journey from exile in Switzerland back to Russia in April 1917. That Sassnitz to Trelleborg ferry was the Baltic’s last surviving passenger train ferry, carrying seasonal direct trains from Berlin to Malmö. We reported on a journey on that rail-sea route in issue 59 of hidden europe.