A Painted Lady on a Bishop of Oxford

This Painted Lady butterfly enjoyed the company of a Bishop of Oxford

dahlia in the Sofiero castle garden.

Schooner Thor Heyerdahl and expedition motor yacht Capella C met in Öresund

German schooner Thor Heyerdahl and UK registered expedition motor yacht

Capella C met this afternoon in Öresund. 

Schooner Thor Heyerdahl:

"Thor Heyerdahl (named after Thor Heyerdahl), originally named Tinka, later Marga Henning, Silke, and Minnow, was built as a freight carrying motor ship with auxiliary sails at the shipyard Smit & Zoon in Westerbroek, Netherlands, in 1930. Her original homeport being Hamburg, Germany, she was used for the next 50 years as a freighter. Eventually sailing unter the flag of Panama as Minnow and then awaiting further use in Germany, she was bought in 1979 by two sailing enthusiasts, who turned the now run-down ship into a topsail schooner to use it for sail training, especially for teenagers and young adults. One of the two original owners was Detlef Soitzek, who had sailed with the Norwegian anthropologist, zoologist, ethnologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl on his Tigris expedition in 1977/1978, and suggested to name the ship after the famous researcher and adventurer. The ownership of the ship was subsequently turned over to an association.
From spring to fall, Thor Heyerdahl sails mainly the Baltic Sea and participates in international sail training events. In winter, the ship has repeatedly crossed the Atlantic Ocean and sailed in the Caribbean, especially as classroom under sails with teenage crews." (Wikipedia)

Expedition motor yacht Capella C:

"This vessel was built at BOELE’s SHEEPSWERFEN EN  shipyard in Holland and launched in 1968 as “Her Majesty Ship Bloomendhal” A905, an auxiliary hydrographic vessel of the Royal Deutch Navy.
Later on she became a Pilot Boat for the Rotterdam Harbour’s administration. In 1989 an Australian/Irish gentleman refitted her as a private yacht, and named her Capella C.  The Stars Capella A and Capella B are “Capella”. This double star appears as only one for the human’s eyes and it is one of the brightness stars of the sky. Capella is a well know star for the celestial navigators.
M.Y. Capella C has hosted prestigious guests like members of the British Society and H.S.H. the Prince Rainier III of Monaco." 

http://www.capellac.com

HMY Britannia in Helsinki 1976

HMY Britannia in Helsinki on May 26, 1976. The ship brought Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on a four day official state visit to Finland. 

The original picture - here with my colorization - by Erkki Salmela is in the Helsinki city museum collection (N109804). 

"Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia, also known as the Royal Yacht Britannia, is the former royal yacht of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in service from 1954 until 1997. She was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, and is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the racing cutter built for the Prince of Wales in 1893. During her 43-year career, the yacht travelled more than a million nautical miles around the globe. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is a popular visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year." 

"HMY Britannia was built at the shipyard of John Brown & Co. Ltd in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire. She was launched by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 April 1953, and commissioned on 11 January 1954. The ship was designed with three masts: a 133-foot (41 m) foremast, a 139-foot (42 m) mainmast, and a 118-foot (36 m) mizzenmast. The top aerial on the foremast and the top 20 feet (6.1 m) of the mainmast were hinged to allow the ship to pass under bridges." -- 

"HMY Britannia, when on royal duties, was escorted by a Royal Navy warship. The yacht was a regular sight at Cowes Week in early August and, usually, for the remainder of the month, was home to the Queen and her family for an annual cruise around the islands off the west coast of Scotland (known as the "Western Isles Tour")."

"During her career as Royal Yacht, Britannia conveyed the Queen, other members of the Royal Family and various dignitaries on 696 foreign visits and 272 visits in British waters. In this time, Britannia steamed 1,087,623 nautical miles (2,014,278 km)." --

"In 1997, the Conservative government committed itself to replacing the Royal Yacht if re-elected, while the Labour Party refused to disclose its plans for the vessel. After Labour won the general election in May 1997, it announced the vessel was to be retired and no replacement would be built. The previous government had argued that the cost was justified by its role in foreign policy and promoting British interests abroad, particularly through conferences held by British Invisibles, formerly the Committee on Invisible Exports."

"It was estimated by the Overseas Trade Board that events held on board the yacht helped raise £3 billion for the treasury between 1991 and 1995 alone.^[8] The new government said the expenditure could not be justified given other pressures on the defence budget, from which a replacement vessel would have been funded and maintained. Proposals for the construction of a new royal yacht, perhaps financed through a loan or by the Queen's own funds, have made little headway."

"The Royal Yacht's last foreign mission was to convey the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, and the Prince of Wales back from Hong Kong after its handover to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. Britannia was decommissioned on 11 December 1997. The Queen, normally stoic, is reported to have shed a tear at the decommissioning ceremony that was attended by most of the senior members of the Royal Family."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Britannia  

Dahlias in the Sofiero castle garden

It is dahlia season now in the Sofiero castle garden in Helsingborg: 

Legendary female aviator Elly Beinhorn in Helsinki 1952

German aviator Elly Beinhorn attended the 1952 Helsinki summer Olympics as a "flying reporter" for Quick magazine. Volker von Bonin took this picture - here with my partial colorization - of Beinhorn immediately after her arrival at the Malmi airport in Helsinki. The original is in the Helsinki city museum collection (N210167).

"Elly Beinhorn, referred to as “one of the most daring women of the 20th century” on the inside cover of her autobiography Alleinflug (Solo Flight), was born in Hannover, Germany in 1907 as the only child of a merchant family. In 1928 she was so fascinated by a lecture she attended held by the trans-Atlantic aviator Hermann Köhl that she immediately applied for acceptance to the Berlin-Staaken amateur pilot school. She received her amateur pilot license in the spring of 1929, and shortly thereafter she acquired her stunt pilot license at the flying school in Würzburg. Additional pilot licenses were to follow.

In 1931 she took off on her first solo flight to Africa. After a four-day-long trek through the desert, with the aid of locals she survived an emergency landing during her return flight to Europe, returning safely to Germany: “My emergency landing caused more headlines than my wildest flights.”

Several months later the 24-year-old ventured to circle the world in her Klemm KL-20 airplane. The flight took her via southern Asia to Port Darwin in Australia, where she boarded a ship to Panama. From there she flew via the Cordilleras to the east coast of South America, arriving in Buenos Aires on July 23, 1932.

In 1936 Beinhorn married the famous racecar driver Bernd Rosemeyer, who died in a car accident two years later, only ten weeks after the birth of their son Bernd. She remarried in 1941 and within a year gave birth to a much-longed-for daughter, whom she named Stephanie. After the war Beinhorn-Rosemeyer reapplied for and received her pilot licenses in Switzerland in 1951. Once the flying ban was lifted in Germany, she successfully participated in numerous competitions."

http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/elly-beinhorn/

A woman with a cat (1910 - 1920)

A woman and a cat photographed by the Finland-Swedish poet Edith Södergran some time between 1910 and 1920. My partial colorization of a photo in the Svenska Litteratursällskapet collection in Helsinki.

Södergran was a cat lover and wrote many poems which included cats. She also photographed a great numer of cats.

In one of her last poems, "There is no one who has time" ("Det finns ingen som har tid i världen"), she writes:

"Och Gud är med i alla sammanhang.
När gumman oväntat mötte sin katt vid brunnen
och katten sin matmor.
Det var en stor glädje för dem båda
men allrastörst var den att Gud hade fört dem samman
och velat dem denna underbara vänskap
i fjorton år."

"And God is present in every context.
When the old woman unexpectedly met her cat by the well
and the cat his housemistress.
That was a great joy for them both
but greatest of all was that God had led them together
and wished upon them this wonderful friendship
that lasted fourteen years."

"Edith Irene Södergran (4 April 1892 – 24 June 1923) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet. One of the first modernists within Swedish-language literature, her influences came from French Symbolism, German expressionism, and Russian futurism. At the age of 24 she released her first collection of poetry entitled Dikter ("Poems"). Södergran died at the age of 31, having contracted tuberculosis as a teenager. She did not live to experience the worldwide appreciation of her poetry, which has influenced many lyrical poets. Södergran is considered to have been one of the greatest modern Swedish-language poets, and her work continues to influence Swedish-language poetry and musical lyrics, for example, in the works of Mare Kandre, Gunnar Harding, Eva Runefelt and Eva Dahlgren." (Wikipedia)

Flowers and butterflies

Just a few shots of flowers, fruits, berries and butterflies.