Silja Serenade, the overnight cruise ship from Stockholm to Helsinki, is a floating shopping mall. It carries two thousand passengers, mostly Swedes and Finns looking for getaway weekends in the others’ cities. On board are numerous duty-free shops, a movie theater, a Broadway-esque show (Grease), a casino, and several restaurants and bars.

I checked into my below-deck cabin with the Irish immigrants, then lounged on the sun deck as the ship picked its way through Sweden’s archipelago and into the Baltic Sea.

The water was calm. In the setting sun, the islands were peaceful and picturesque, evergreen, each with red-and-white summer houses huddled around docks. A few small islands, white with guano, teemed with birds. After a dinner of, what else, Swedish meatballs, I went topside to watch the sunset. The pub erupted in cheers every time the Finns scored a hockey goal against Belarus.