An ethnologist sails round the world with ISOLDE
A voyage around the world - we associate it with adventure, far-away countries, exotic cultures and peoples.
Many are those that might think of Magellan or - in Sweden - our own pioneer Daniel Solander.
Others may come to think of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea or perhaps the adventures of the round the world sail races of modern days.
People interested in botany or Swedish naval history might sail away in their thoughts - and possibly in their dreams - on the frigate Eugénie, whose round-the-world voyage in the 1850s was so richly and vividly described by the natural scientist Nils Johan Andersson.
Most probably, there are fewer that come to think of the people who are in fact performing those voyages again and again today in their everyday lives.
Few people have probably any real idea of the everyday life of a seaman working in oceangoing shipping today.
The, often romantic, associations aroused by the word "seaman" are mostly the product of Man's own need of fantasy, dreams and romance - as well as ignorance in many cases.
In a number of books published by the National Maritime Museum in Sweden, ethnologists have depicted life on board ships sailing in Swedish coastal shipping.
This year, the latest book in this series will be published, but this time the focus is on oceangoing shipping and its seamen.
The book is based on a three-month voyage around the world, which the undersigned, accompanied by the museum's photographer, undertook on board Wallenius Lines' Singapore-flagged ship m/v ISOLDE together with a crew consisting of Swedish senior officers, Burmese junior officers and Singaporean, Malaysian, Philippine and Burmese ratings.
After having acquired what is in many ways a unique insight into the working and living conditions in shipping today, the ambition of the book was also to give a picture of what it is like to live and work on a ship that has been flagged out.
How does it compare with life on board ship in the old days?
What specific problems face seamen today and what problems have lost their importance as the result of developments in shipping?
The book gives a description of the different stages of a voyage around the world interspersed with a discussion of organization, work, cultural prerequisites, food and free time as well as changes in the shipping industry and their impact on today's seamen.
A lot of space is also given in the book to the impressions gained on the ship itself.
The ISOLDE of Singapore functioned as an ever-present principal character one meets in many descriptions as well as in technical data.
As a background to the work and life on board, she tells us something about the existence on board and about shipping today.
On the walls hang memories from the past, from "the Swedish time" in the form of paintings with Swedish themes or prizes from athletic contests.
There are also the empty rooms, which are never being used because life on board today is so much different from when the ship was built in the mid-1980's.
What we met on board was a seaman's life that has little to do with the romantic lifestyle of the seaman depicted in songs and stories.
The voyage around the world gave the same impression. Seamen of the merchant shipping today, most often notice the fact that they are performing a round the world voyage, only by the changes in temperature, changes between transoceanic and coastal voyages and a certain variation in the view when sailing close to land.
Out at sea, there is, of course, often no variation at all, possibly a school of dolphins but otherwise nothing but water and more water.
Laytime in port, which in bygone days often was longer than the time spent at sea, has been minimized to a fraction of the time spent on board and, as a result, life in port has also disappeared.
The French ethnologist Maurice Duval points out that seamen today seldom travel, at least not in the meaning the well-known linguist Roland Barthes gives to travelling - that is, meeting the unknown.
In his view, the only journey a seaman makes is between his home and the ship.
Once on the ship, the seaman has a place of residence again, even if the scenery changes around him and the community he lives in.
During our three months on the ISOLDE, we called at many different ports. After leaving Wallhamn and Sweden, we called at Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Zeebrugge, Southampton, Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, Auckland, Melbourne, Brisbane, Shimizu, Yokkaichi, Nagoya and Bristol.
We stayed overnight in only four of these 15 ports.
We were seldom in port long enough to meet "the unknown".
Our travelling bacame more a question of the emotions, thoughts and expectations we experienced during the different phases of the round-the-world voyage.
Eagerness in work on the way out into the Atlantic, the peace and quietness in the Pacific, the creeping irritation as we approached Japan, the longing for home in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the feeling of soon arriving back home again when we left Suez behind us and sailed across the Mediterranean, passed Gibraltar and continued northwards along the Portuguese coast towards the last ports on the voyage.
Today, encounters with other cultures take place more often on board ship (than in port).
With the short times spent in port, it is even more important to be able to live comfortably on board.
The accommodation are well-planned and comfortably furnished.
The material standard is good and there are a number of rooms where the crew members can socialize, even though several of these rooms are not being used.
On board the ship people from many parts of the world is brought together.
There are five different nationalities, five different ethnic groups and cultures and three different major religions.
It is on the ship you can eat Asian food, listen to Indonesian reggae and Malaysian love songs, learn about how Muslims, Buddists and Catholics view the world, sing karaoke, eat Singaporean hari raya-cookies and wonder at the different perspectives of work, politeness, decency, collectivism, individualism and much more.
Our voyage on the ISOLDE coincided with Christmas and New Year as well as the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, and the festival at the end of this month, Hari Raya, which we celebrated on the Red Sea:
"at the pool, a barbecue has been prepared. On a table covered with a tablecloth, there are serving dishes containing lamb steak, chicken sausages, beef steaks, giant prawns, chicken wings, noodles and pork chops.
Beside each serving dish there are small slips of paper with a description of what sort of meat is on the serving dish - pork, beef, lamb or chicken.
There are also bowls of potato crisps and peanuts, a crate of beer and a bowl of punch.
Two grills nearby are labelled 'for porky' and 'for beefy'.
Festivals which, like hari raya, are still religious affairs, distinctive and heavily religious in their natural context, are celebrated in a special standardized form.
A maritime culture takes over the festivals and forms them according to its own cultural patterns, which means that some of us can have pork chops and drink beer during a Muslim festival.
The only indication that religious customs are involved is the two grills with their signs and the serving dishes with their slips of paper so that one doesn't eat something not approved by one's religion.
The Muslims, of course, don't eat the pork chops, but nevertheless these pieces of meat are there on the serving dish during Hari Raya, thus showing that this is a very different Hari Raya in a very different environment.
Religion is otherwise something one doesn't talk about and which is kept inside one's cabin door.
The different religions are most noticeable when it comes to eating habits.
Something that characterizes life on board to a higher degree is the different cultural perspectives concerning matters which are necessary for work and life on board to function smoothly - e.g. leadership.
The Swedish non-authoritarian and delegating view of leadership collides with perspectives according to which a leader rather should be an unapproachable father figure regarded with everything from respect to fear and warm admiration by subordinates.
On the one hand, we have the perspective where the leader expects independent co-workers and a professional dialogue.
On the other, we have the perspective of leadership where a person with power, who asks for advice and goes into a discussion with his subordinates, is regarded as a weak leader.
The result of this meeting between different perspectives is that the ratings act submissively towards the Swedish senior officers, which makes the officers feel uncomfortable.
This situation creates not only feelings of stress and nervousness at work - it also results in a distance between ratings and officers during their spare time.
However, despite this distance, there are often warm ties between Swedes and Asians.
The Asians, who are always working on contracts, often return to the ship on new contracts.
After some time, they get to know each other and the perspectives of the different cultures.
The Asians get used to - and increasingly appreciate - being given professional freedom and a completely different responsibility compared with the norm on Asian ships.
The Swedes, for their part, try to find a way to handle the Asian submissiveness and they build strategies to ensure that work and spare-time will function as smoothly as possible, given the conditions applying on board a ship such as the m/v ISOLDE.
Peter Du Rietz