Tallink
Estonian shipping company
Tallink (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈtɑlʲˑiŋk]) is an Estonian shipping company operating Baltic Sea cruiseferries and ropax ships from Estonia to Finland, Estonia to Sweden and Finland to Sweden. It is the largest passenger and cargo shipping company in the Baltic Sea region. It owns Silja Line and a part of SeaRail. Tallink Hotels runs four hotels in Tallinn and Riga.
It is a publicly traded company, that is listed in Tallinn Stock Exchange. A major shareholder is an investment company AS Infortar, that also has ownership in several Tallink subsidiaries and a natural gas company Elenger.
History
Background
The history of the company known today as Tallink can be traced back to 1965, when the Soviet Union-based Estonian Shipping Company (ESCO) introduced passenger ferry services between Helsinki and Tallinn on MS Vanemuine. Regular around-the-year passenger ferry services began in 1968, on MS Tallinn, which served the route until it was replaced by the new MS Georg Ots in 1980.
1989–1992
In May 1989, ESCO formed a new subsidiary, joint venture (Estonian: ühisettevõte) Tallink, together with the Finnish Palkkiyhtymä Oy. In December of the same year, ESCO and Palkkiyhtymä purchased MS Scandinavian Sky from SeaEscape, and the ship began servicing the Helsinki–Tallinn route on 8 January 1990 as MS Tallink.
“Tallink” enters the record as estonian shipping company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tallink, Estonian and shipping can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Tallink” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tallink, Estonian and shipping provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1536909. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1968, 1980 and 1989.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Tallink” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.