Pirates and Imperial Guards at the Beach

[SpacePolice89]

[Mazin]

Nice camera work :) That first photo does look a bit like Carribean, but with other ones i guess they sailed somewhere to northern parts of Europe to seek that treasure? ;) IS that a scandinavian landscape perhaps? What's that tall tower/structure in the far distance?

Btw, at first glance i was sure that Captain Roger was lifting that chest by his hook. He'd be a very strong man then ;) No wonder his people made him a captain then. But now that i've enlarged Your photo i see that chest just stands next to him and so i'm dissapointed ;) 

[Rogue Redcoat]

Aye, some very nice photos, if it were a set, I think it could pass for a battle pack in the 1990s (if they made such things) has everything a set could need some treasure, pirates, and the imperials :)

[SpacePolice89]

17 hours ago, Rogue Redcoat said:

Aye, some very nice photos, if it were a set, I think it could pass for a battle pack in the 1990s (if they made such things) has everything a set could need some treasure, pirates, and the imperials :)

Thank you! All the minifigures are actually from 6252 Sea Mates released in 1993.

23 hours ago, Mazin said:

Nice camera work :) That first photo does look a bit like Carribean, but with other ones i guess they sailed somewhere to northern parts of Europe to seek that treasure? ;) IS that a scandinavian landscape perhaps? What's that tall tower/structure in the far distance?

Thank you! The pictures are taken on a beach called Gunnarsstrand in Hangö, Finland. I live quite close to the spot where the pictures are taken. Hangö used to be a coastal fortress town when the city was a part of Sweden. Therefore it is vey suitable to take this kind of pictures here. My ancestors moved to the area from Sweden because they served in the Royal Swedish Navy. In 1809 the fortress called Gustafsvärn was attacked by the Russians and destroyed. They also burned the town. The structure you see is a combined border guard and harbor pilot station built in the 60s or 70s that is situated on the southernmost cape of Finland.

[Mazin]

42 minutes ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Thank you! All the minifigures are actually from 6252 Sea Mates released in 1993.

Thank you! The pictures are taken on a beach called Gunnarsstrand in Hangö, Finland. I live quite close to the spot where the pictures are taken. Hangö used to be a coastal fortress town when the city was a part of Sweden. Therefore it is vey suitable to take this kind of pictures here. My ancestors moved to the area from Sweden because they served in the Royal Swedish Navy. In 1809 the fortress called Gustafsvärn was attacked by the Russians and destroyed. They also burned the town. The structure you see is a combined border guard and harbor pilot station built in the 60s or 70s that is situated on the southernmost cape of Finland.

Very interesting, thank You! :) I'm a history geek myself, well, got master's degree from that geekness actually, and i'm passionate about all things Scandinavia and Baltic oriented ( even tho some would argue if Finland is part of Scandinavia or not ), as my parents used to work in a ferry company called Polferries and sailed to all corners of this sea, when i was young. 

i'm a bit of a ferry geek too because of that and so since Finland is a giant on the the ferry market it's all kinda connected to each other in my mind - Baltic, Scandinavia, Finland, ferries, history, maritime wars, my chidlhood, even Legos! as my first sets came from duty free shops on those very ferries, back in times when we couldn't realy get them on land actually, and when ferries were sort of a gateway to a different world of the West :)

And i remmber that some of our ferries did go to Hank ( that's how we call it ), as well as reading about a battle taking place there in 1714. 

So it's very cool to meet someone from such place :) We got a book about the battle of Oravais ( and the whole war for of 1808-1809 ) released on the polish market recently, so i hope to get a copy and read about those events soon :) A friend of mine is currently writing about russo-swedish clashes on the Baltic too. Publications like these are always kinda an event for me realy, cause history of nordic countries is not that popular among our historians and publishers, while i'm different and would like to see much more stuff on this subject available.

And since i can't get enough reading material from others, i'm working on some reading material myself right now. Got some big adventure projects involving both Sweden and Finland, that i'm hoping to finish soon  :)  

BTW You must be one of those swedish speaking Fins then i guess? ;) perhaps even one of those that never learned finnish too? ;) 

Anyway, i hope that Your minifigs will decide to take us for more walks trough this beautiful landscape, case i sure would like to see more of them! Who knows, maybe this photo session will inspire You ( and them ) to build a whole new fort for them, located on this coast? 

Or since there's plenty of islands and shallows in the area, they could build themselves a galley or a snauw, pram, xebec or other craft designed for these waters :) 

[SpacePolice89]

@MazinThe Battle of Rilax in 1714 happened on the other side of the peninsula but that's not very far from where the photos are taken. It would be fun to build a fort based on Gustafsvärn someday, and I guess it would be best to use Imperial Soldiers because their uniforms are the closest to Swedish uniforms of that era. Hangö (Hanko in Finnish) is part of the Swedish speaking part of Finland and I am indeed a Finland-Swede (a term we prefer because it's the direct translation of Finlandssvensk). As a kid I spoke Swedish and English (because I have many relatives in Canada) and on the third grade we started to study Finnish in school. It is very difficult to learn Finnish because it's not related to Swedish at all and classes were very theoretical. When I was 17 I went to play hockey for a team in Lohja and all my teammates spoke Finnish and that's where I learnt to speak better Finnish. I remember that there used to be some Polish ferries in the harbor and my parents used to travel with them in the 80s if I remember correctly. I was a very young child in the 80s so I do not personally remember. I have visited Poland a couple of times and it is a very beautiful country, my dad's former colleague at his job was Polish and with him we have visited Warsaw. When I was younger we had an RV and we drove across Poland from the Baltics to Germany. 

[SpacePolice89]

1 hour ago, Mazin said:

Anyway, i hope that Your minifigs will decide to take us for more walks trough this beautiful landscape, case i sure would like to see more of them! Who knows, maybe this photo session will inspire You ( and them ) to build a whole new fort for them, located on this coast? 

Back in 2007 I was inspired by the fort to build something similar for the Imperial Soldiers

This is an old photo of mine from Brickshelf from 2007 that shows a small part of the fort and a ship that was inspired by a Swedish galley

This photo is also from 2007 and if the picture would be a little wider you'd see the coast border guard/harbor pilot station on the left just outside the picture

[Mazin]

Very cool. I used to do and post some comics too, actually i still have plenty of photos intended for comic stories, but never had time to work on them in Paint ;) Maybe some day will go back to it to finish the whole thing, so that all that work i've invested into it woul be worth it ;)

And yeah, when i was a kid i thought about blue soldiers as the French and red soldiers as the British, but back then my knowledge and interest in history was much smaller, right now i try to get inspired by all those classic models and scenarios of my childhood plays to sort of mimic them in my own projects, with the one about polish-swedish wars ( "Deluge" ) being the most advanced.