The wreck of a Swedish navy ship dating from the 17th century has been visible since the beginning of February in Stockholm thanks to an unprecedented drop in the Baltic Sea.
In the heart of the Swedish capital, the wooden slats of the ship’s hull rise above the water, revealing a well-preserved wreck.
“The wreck here is a ship that the Swedish navy intentionally sank, probably around 1640,” Jim Hansson, archaeologist at Vrak, Stockholm’s shipwreck museum, told AFP.
After numerous missions in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish navy decided to use it as the foundation of a new bridge in this area located near the island of Kastellholmen, in the center of the Swedish capital, he adds. “The solution was to use the shell itself, which is made of oak, a very durable wood, rather than new wood. In the Baltic, there are no marine worms that eat away at the wood, which can therefore last, as you see, 400 years,” says the expert.
The wreck had already appeared in 2013 but it had never been so visible, the Baltic Sea having reached its lowest level in a hundred years, according to the archaeologist. “There has been a very long period of high pressure here in the Nordic region. The water from the Baltic Sea was therefore pushed towards the Nordic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean,” he says.
Five wrecks form a bridge
The name of the ship could not be precisely determined because five wrecks are lined up in this same area to make up the bridge, all dating from the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century.
A research program called “The Lost Fleet” is underway to identify and precisely date the large number of wrecks of Swedish military ships sunk at the bottom of the Baltic.
