Åland's history: islands bound by treaties they never signed

Who settled the islands before any crown held them

The first people reached Åland by boat or over the seasonal ice. No land bridge ever joined the archipelago to the mainland: the ice sheet withdrew from the islands around 9000 BC, the highest peaks rose out of the Baltic by 8000 BC, and the land has gone on lifting by several millimetres a year ever since.

Human remains, pottery and animal bones from the Middle Neolithic, about 4000 BC, are the oldest evidence of people on the islands. The History of Åland article links them first to the Pitted Ware culture and later to the Comb Ceramic culture. The main Åland article puts the order the other way round and dates the first Comb Ceramic settlers to around 7000 years ago. Both describe the islands as a place where two Neolithic cultures met. People hunted seals and birds, fished and gathered plants, and farming began early. Several Bronze Age settlement sites have been found, including on Kökar.

Six hillforts survive from the Iron Age, and more than 380 Viking Age burial sites have been documented. Visit Åland, the islands' tourist board, reports research suggesting that Ålanders already traded in the Viking Age, and that in the Middle Ages they sailed mainly east to Åbo and Reval, now Tallinn, and west to Stockholm. Britannica dates the conversion of the islands to the twelfth century, by Swedish missionaries. Wooden churches came first; stone replaced many of them in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Franciscans founded a monastery on Hamnö in Kökar in the fifteenth.

How Kastelholm made Åland a Swedish castle county

Åland came under Swedish rule in the thirteenth century. The castle at Kastelholm is believed to have been begun in the 1380s and is first mentioned in 1388, and in 1397 the islands entered the Kalmar Union, which put Denmark, Norway and Sweden under a single monarch.

The castle was fought over. The Danish naval officer Søren Norby captured it, in 1507 according to the History of Åland article and in 1505 according to the main Åland article, and Danish and Swedish forces fought several battles around it between 1521 and 1523. In 1537 Gustav Vasa made Åland a royal castle county and set up three breeding farms for the crown. The monasteries closed, the state confiscated the church silver, and Catholicism ended on the islands.

Ålands museum dates the castle's high period to Gustav Vasa and his sons, when Åland and Finland were both part of the Swedish kingdom, and records building in stages until the 1630s, when Åland was merged into the castle county of Åbo. The Wikipedia article on Åland's politics gives 1634 for that reform. After several fires the castle decayed and was abandoned, and it stands now as a restored ruin.

The seventeenth century tied the islands closer to Stockholm. Many Ålanders were conscripted into Swedish wars, a permanent mail route between Stockholm and Turku was run through the archipelago, and the first school opened in Saltvik. The Kastelholm witch trials of 1665 and 1668 ended with more than twenty women executed.

The Great Northern War brought the first Russian occupation. Many Ålanders fled west as Russian troops advanced, and Britannica records that Peter I seized the islands in 1714 after a naval victory over Sweden. The Battle of Grengam was fought near Ledsund on 7 August 1720. Swedish rule held for most of another century, until Russian forces occupied Åland in 1808 during the Finnish War. The Treaty of Fredrikshamn of 1809 ceded Finland and Åland to the Russian Empire, and the islands became part of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

Why Russia built Bomarsund and then lost it

The cession put a Russian frontier within reach of Stockholm. Britannica places the islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia, about 40 kilometres east of the Swedish coast, and nordics.info repeats a phrase attributed to Napoleon, that Åland had become "a loaded pistol directed at Sweden's heart". Britannica also reports that the islands passed to Russia on condition that they would not be fortified.

Russia fortified them regardless. Work on the fortress of Bomarsund, on the eastern side of the main island, began in 1829 according to the History of Åland article and in 1832 according to the main Åland article. Britain regarded the fortification as a hostile act and lodged a formal protest, and the History of Åland article names Palmerston as the minister who objected, without effect. The fortress was never completed. In 1854, during the Crimean War, British and French forces attacked it and destroyed it almost completely. The village of Skarpans beside it was bombarded as well, and Mariehamn took its place as the centre of the islands.

The peace produced the rule that still governs Åland. A convention between France, Great Britain and Russia, signed in Paris on 30 March 1856 and attached to the Paris Peace Treaty, runs to two articles. Its operative words are that "the Åland Islands shall not be fortified, and that no military or naval establishments shall be maintained or created there". World Autonomies, a reference database on autonomous regions, records that the powers acted on Sweden's wishes, and that Sweden never signed. Åland was not a party to it.

Russia kept to the convention and resented it. It maintained only a small guard on the islands and tried repeatedly between 1863 and 1912 to have the convention abolished, while building naval fortifications on both shores of the Gulf of Finland to protect Saint Petersburg. A Russian garrison arrived in 1906. The secret Treaty of Björkö with Germany in 1907 gave Russia a free hand on the islands, and Russia stationed naval and military forces there, citing the need to stop arms being smuggled into Finland.

The First World War set the clause aside. From 1914 Russia fortified Åland against a German attack with the tacit consent of Britain, France and Sweden. Ten forts went up, on Saggö, Kungsö, Korsö and Kökar among other sites, and 12,000 men were stationed on the islands. The Åland Islands dispute article adds a submarine base used by Russian and British forces.

What the islands built under Russian rule

The century under the tsars also produced a merchant fleet. Freight shipping began in earnest after the middle of the nineteenth century, when several large shipowners settled in Mariehamn. Part-ownership companies, in which dozens of owners shared the risk and the profit of one ship, became common, and as farmer-shipowners built larger vessels their routes stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Visit Åland dates the first Atlantic crossing by an Åland ship to 1865, by the barque Preciosa from Eckerö.

The Great Northern Telegraph Company laid a cable from Mariehamn to Nystad in 1877 with the help of Kaj Himberg, a local inventor who had built a teleprinter using a six-unit code in 1875 and who installed the first telephone in Mariehamn in 1892. Lemström's canal opened to shipping in 1882. Prisoners from Finland dug it, at a cost of 180,000 Finnish markka. The Önningeby artists' colony was founded in 1886.

Malaria was endemic on the islands for at least 150 years, spread by Anopheles claviger mosquitoes, with severe outbreaks in the eighteenth century and in 1853 and 1862.

Why the islanders asked to join Sweden

Finland declared independence in December 1917, and the Ålanders claimed the right of self-determination. They held secret meetings, formed a self-constituted Ålandic Assembly, and sent two petitions, in December 1917 and June 1919, to the Swedish king and the Swedish state. The figures for support differ by source. The History of Åland article gives 95% for union with Sweden, the main Åland article says the 1919 petition was signed by 96.4% of voters, and the article on Åland's politics counts 7,135 residents on the petition of 1918. A 2015 master's thesis from the University of Jyväskylä calls it a mass address signed by a clear majority of the adult population.

More than 90% of Ålanders identified as Swedish, according to the dispute article, and they feared the Finnish nationalist movement in the new state. The thesis cites the historian Rask, writing in 2006, who reports that researchers now read the Åland movement as an ideological argument driven by alarm at the swings in Finland's foreign and domestic politics, with the old attachment to Sweden as its language.

The Finnish Civil War made the question military. Reports of unrest led Sweden to send a small naval force, and Swedish troops landed on 13 February 1918 to evacuate civilians and to stand between Russian soldiers and the Finnish sides. Finnish Whites took Boxö and Saggö, Reds landed on 17 February, and the two fought at Godby in Finström, where the Whites won. The White government in Vaasa, backed by Germany, pressed Sweden to withdraw. German forces arrived on 28 February 1918 according to the History of Åland article and in March according to the dispute article, and cleared the Russians out after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The last Swedish troops left in May 1918, the Germans left after Germany's defeat, and the Russian forts were demolished in 1919 under an agreement between Finland, Sweden and Germany.

Sweden put the question to the Paris Peace Conference on 18 March 1919 and proposed a referendum on the islands. Finland refused. In 1920 the Finnish parliament passed an Autonomy Act that gave Åland its own parliament and cultural rights. The Ålanders rejected it as insufficient, and two of their leaders, Julius Sundblom and Carl Björkman, were briefly jailed.

How the League of Nations decided the Åland question

On a British proposal that Finland and Sweden both accepted, the dispute went to the Council of the League of Nations. A Commission of Jurists first found that the League had jurisdiction. A Commission of Rapporteurs then gathered evidence, and found the Ålanders' fear for their language and culture legitimate. It concluded all the same that a minority had no reason to secede where the state guaranteed its social, ethnic and religious character. Carl Enckell argued Finland's case and Erik Palmstierna argued Sweden's. The dispute article credits Finnish diplomacy and the support of Japan, which held that the islands belonged to the Finnish archipelago, and the main Åland article names Nitobe Inazō, an Under-Secretary General of the League, as a key diplomat behind the outcome.

The Council decided on 24 June 1921. Åland would stay in Finland, the islanders would get guarantees for their language and culture, and the islands would stay demilitarised and become neutral territory. Finland and Sweden were left to draft the guarantees. On 27 June 1921 they presented the Åland Agreement, which added six provisions to the 1920 act: the language of schooling, land ownership tied to domicile, the appointment of the governor, Åland's revenues, and oversight by the League.

The security half followed in October. The Convention on the Non-fortification and Neutralisation of the Åland Islands, signed on 20 October 1921, restated the 1856 rule and added that the islands must be kept out of war. World Autonomies and the Wikipedia article on demilitarisation count ten signatory states. Nordics.info names nine: Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Britain, Italy, Poland and Sweden. The Soviet Union was not a party, because it was not a member of the League. Åland was not a party either.

The islanders accepted what they had campaigned against. Their still informal assembly approved the amended act in 1922, elections were held, and the first legally constituted Parliamentary Assembly of Åland met in Mariehamn on 9 June 1922, the date now kept as Self-Government Day. The Finnish parliament passed the Guarantee Act in August 1922. The Jyväskylä thesis cites Rask again: by the first plenary session in 1922 the longing for Sweden had given way to an Åland national feeling. John Grandell wrote "Ålänningens sång" the same year, and it is the islands' anthem.

How the Winter War tested the neutral islands

The arrangement was tested within two decades. Sweden and Finland discussed a joint defence plan for the islands in 1930, the Stockholm Plan, and dropped it over Soviet opposition, and nordics.info records a failed Swedish-Finnish attempt to remilitarise the islands in 1938. During the Winter War Finland deployed troops on Åland, and none of the states party to the 1921 convention protested.

The peace took that back. A treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union of 11 October 1940 required Finland to demilitarise the islands again and gave the Soviet Union the right to keep a consulate in Mariehamn to supervise it. Sweden stayed neutral through the war and did not intervene on the islands.

In 1945, while Finland was negotiating peace, the Åland parliament raised reunion with Sweden a second time, arguing that Finland was protecting the islands' Swedish language and culture badly. Sweden replied that it wanted the status quo. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 states that "The Åland Islands shall remain demilitarized in accordance with the situation as presently existing", and the Soviet Union notified Finland that it wished to keep its 1940 treaty. World Autonomies adds that the Soviet Union intervened in Finnish internal affairs in the late 1940s, during the revision of the autonomy act.

That revision is where World Autonomies places the turning point. The Autonomy Act of 28 December 1951 strengthened the language and culture provisions and introduced the right of domicile, a regional citizenship that decides who may vote in Åland elections, buy land and run a business. From then on the Ålanders worked on developing their self-government, and the aim of reunion with Sweden fell away. The flag was adopted on 3 April 1954. Over the following decades the description the dispute article records moved from "a Swedish province under Finnish possession" to "an autonomous part of Finland".

Why Mariehamn kept its sailing ships after steam

Between the wars Åland's shipowners went against the trend. Steamships were spreading fast after the First World War, and the island owners bought deep-sea sailing ships at very low prices. Gustaf Erikson founded Rederi AB Gustaf Erikson with partners in 1913. In 1935 his fleet held fifteen steel square-riggers, eight North Sea sailers and six motor sailing ships, and between 1913 and 1947 he owned 66 merchant ships in all. They carried wheat from Australia to Britain until 1947 and came back to Mariehamn between voyages. After his death in 1947 his son Edgar Erikson took over and replaced much of the fleet with steam and motor ships.

The record of that trade survives. The company archive, 20 shelf metres of business letters and crew letters from 1913 to 1947, was entered on UNESCO's Memory of the World register in the spring of 2023. The four-masted barque Pommern, one of Erikson's ships, lies at the quay of the Western Harbour below the maritime museum, and Visit Åland put its visitors at more than 40,000 a year in 2026.

The ferries came next. Car ferry traffic to Mariehamn began in 1959 with the s/s Viking, 99 metres long and able to take 88 cars, on a route from Galtby in Finland through Mariehamn to Gräddö in Sweden. Tax-free sales on those routes would later shape the terms on which Åland entered the European Union.

How the autonomy was rewritten for Europe

The 1951 act aged in its turn. After almost twenty years of preparation the Finnish parliament passed a new Act on the Autonomy of Åland in constitutional order, with the assent of the Åland parliament, and it entered into force on 1 January 1993. It is the third autonomy act. Any change to it needs the consent of the Åland parliament, so the division of powers between the islands and the state moves only when both agree. Åland had issued its own postage stamps since 1984, and parliamentarism had been the custom since 1988.

Europe followed at once. Because Åland was a separate customs territory, it held its own referendum on joining the European Union on 20 November 1994, after mainland Finland voted on 16 October, and 73.64% of voters approved. The Åland parliament's consent was needed for EU law to apply on the islands, and the terms were written into Protocol No. 2 of Finland's accession treaty. It lets Åland keep the right of domicile rules on land and political office, and exempts the islands from EU tax harmonisation, which kept tax-free sales on the ferries. The Lisbon Treaty of 2009 carried the protocol over.

The 1856 rule survived all of it. In 1992 Finland and Russia confirmed that the 1940 treaty remained in force, and Russia kept its consulate in Mariehamn. Finland marked 150 years of demilitarisation in 2006 with a €5 coin showing a pine tree on one face and a boat's stern and rudder with a dove on the tiller on the other. When Finland applied to join NATO after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ålanders asked for a seat in the Finnish delegation. Finland and NATO both accepted the status quo, and Finland's Defence Policy Report of 2022 stated that Finland is obligated to protect the islands' neutrality. The Finnish Foreign Ministry opened a legal study of the status in 2023.

Åland is still a party to none of the agreements that define it. The Åland Islands Peace Institute notes that under the Autonomy Act the islands must be heard when important questions about them are decided.