[5] The Ilmatar's traffic was suspended during the winter of 1966 for two weeks due to thicker than usual sea ice in the North Baltic.

[9] On 28 November 1968 the Ilmatar was en route from Stockholm to Turku in heavy fog with 177 passengers on board.

[8] In 1970 Finland SS Co, Bore and Svea restructured their joint operations, creating a new marketing company Silja Line.

Following the lengthening, she was mainly used in Finland Steamship Company cruise traffic, and only occasionally for Silja Line service.

Following the end of charter to Finnlines, the Ilmatar was used by Effoa on cruise traffic aimed at the German and Finnish markets, with her itineraries taking her to the Baltic Sea, Norwegian Fjords and the Mediterranean.

[3][11] The Ilmatar returned briefly to Helsinki—Stockholm service for Silja Line, until she was sold on 27 October 1980 for $6.5 million to Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab, one of the owners of the Hurtigruten consortium.

[3][4] After being laid up for over a year, the Ilmatar was sold to Grunstad Maritime Overseas, renamed Viking Princess and re-flagged to Panama.

[14] In February 2010, General Manager Greg Karan announced a potential deal to turn the ship into a floating hotel in Haiti for relief workers.

Company officials claim that this plan is meant to shore up financing so that the ship could be replaced, but workers feared that it was a ploy to force them to buy their own tickets home.

[17] On April 7, 2010 the ship left the Port of Palm Beach and headed for Freeport, Bahamas with its final destination then unknown.

[3] In February 2014, a report came in stating that the ship did not get scrapped, and had been laid up for some time at a scrapyard in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

The Ilmatar was originally built with a yacht-like external appearance, with a sleek raked bow and a rounded stern.

In keeping with the ferry design of the day she did not have a traditional funnel, but two slim exhaust pipes at near the back of the superstructure.

A half-arch shaped dummy "funnel" was attached to the back of the bridge structure, and the Finland Steamship Company colours were painted there.

In addition to the lengthening, new spaces were built behind the bridge, which meant the removal of her original stylised dummy funnel.

At some point during her career as Viking Princess the ship's rear sun deck was radically extended with the addition of a two-level overhanging structure.

The Ilmatar's original interior layout was a compromise between the traditional two-class passenger liner and the new ro-ro car/passenger ferry.

This arrangement was already out of date when the ship was delivered, as Finland SS Co.'s subsidiary Siljavarustamo had taken the delivery of the first ro-ro ferry with bow and rear gates on the North Baltic already in 1961.

[20] An extra cardeck was added on the ship coinciding with the 1973 lengthening, but that too was served by the side gate and a lift.

In the 1979 conversion into a cruise ship more luxurious cabins were added and a swimming pool was constructed on the rear deck.