Golden Age of Aland Music 25.8.2014

The Aland Postal Service has issued three new booklet stamps that has a postage value of Lokalpost named "Golden Age of Aland Music" on the 25th of August 2014. These new stamps featured three of the most popular Aland bands during the 1960s. They were the Anacondas, the Hitch Hikers and the Stockdoves. The stamp booklet features 9 stamps in a 3 x 3 format.

During some groovy years in the middle of the 1960s, dances were arranged in the Åland

community centres on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and, sometimes, even on Sundays.

The bands Anacondas, Hitch Hikers and Stockdoves took pop music of the world to Åland and Finland. The three orchestras are now featured on the three stamps on the First Day Cover.

You can also listen to the bands by scanning the stamps with the free app “Sepac stamps” on your smart phones.

The 1960s was the decade when pop music took Åland by storm. The range of music in the early 1960s had more or less consisted of music performed on accordion, upright bass and guitar for the traditional dances hambo, schottische and foxtrot. But the winds changed and, inspired by bands such as The Shadows, The Spotnicks and The Violents, the Åland barbed-wire band The Anacondas was formed in 1962.


Håkan Rikberg remembers the Hitch Hikers’ tour bus, a rickety minibus, which the police did not like, and which is now featured on the cover of the stamp booklet.  “It had messages and expressions of affections from loyal fans from around the country scribbled all over it.”

Thank you Dear Ella.