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The Viking Glory is a cruise ferry operated by the Finnish Viking Line. Built by the Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry yards in China from 2019 to 2021, it is the second cruise-ferry of the Finnish shipowner to be partly propelled with liquefied natural gas after the Viking Grace. Since March 2022, it has been sailing on routes between Finland, Åland Islands and Sweden on the Turku - Mariehamn - Stockholm axis.

History

Origins and construction
In 2013, Viking Line inaugurated its first liquefied natural gas cruise-ferry, the Viking Grace, on connections between Turku, Mariehamn and Stockholm. The Finnish shipowner, who barely recovered from a long period of difficulty, was ready to regain his prestige from the past. As soon as the Viking Grace was commissioned, the project to build a similar vessel to replace the old Amorella was immediately considered. In November 2016, Viking Line signed a letter of intent with Chinese shipyards Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry. The choice of a foreign manufacturer is then motivated by a drastically lower cost than the Viking Grace, built in Finland by STX. The design of the future ship will be largely inspired by that of its elder with a very similar appearance and overall architecture as well as the desire to opt for LNG propulsion. The new unit will, however, be slightly larger with a length of 222 metres and an announced tonnage of 60,000 tons. On the other hand, its passenger capacity will be the same with 2,800 people and its ability to drive more. In comparison to Viking Grace, other differences will arise, such as the choice of azipod propulsion instead of traditional propellers, or the movement of LNG tanks for crew cabins at the rear. If it had been envisaged that the vessel would be equipped with two rotors designed to generate electrical energy with the Magnus effect in order to reduce its fuel consumption, the idea would not be retained.

Once the main features of the vessel are defined, Viking Line orders its new cruise-ferry on July 3, 2017. It is then part of a joint project between Finland and Sweden financed by the European Union as part of the improvement of service to the Finnish-Swedish lines, with particular emphasis on the use of LNG-fuelled vessels. In order to baptize the ship, a competition will be organized by Viking Line, which will compete ten selected names from 22,500 proposals. Designated on May 27, 2019 after the vote of 30,000 people, the name of the new cruise-ferry will be Viking Glory.

Construction of the vessel began in Xiamen on June 6, 2019. It is planned to be delivered by the end of 2020 but will be delayed due to the