The wreck of a 17th-century Swedish navy ship has become visible in the heart of Stockholm since early February, after an unprecedented drop in the level of the Baltic Sea.
Wooden planks from the vessel’s hull are now breaking the surface of the water near the island of Kastellholmen, offering a rare glimpse of a well-preserved relic from the country’s maritime past.
“The wreck here is a ship that the Swedish navy deliberately sank, probably around 1640,” said Jim Hansson, an archaeologist at Vrak, Stockholm’s museum of wrecks.
According to Hansson, the navy decided to use the vessel as a foundation for a new bridge following numerous missions in the Baltic. Instead of felling new timber, they repurposed the hull itself.
“The solution was to use the hull itself, which is made of oak, a very strong wood, rather than new timber. In the Baltic, there are no shipworms that eat away at the wood, so it can last, as you can see, for 400 years,” he explained.
While the wreck had previously been spotted in 2013, it has never been this visible. Hansson attributed the phenomenon to an extended period of high pressure over the Nordic region, which pushed water from the Baltic out toward the North Sea and the Atlantic, causing the sea level to drop to its lowest point in a century.
Identifying the exact name of the ship has proven difficult, as five wrecks dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries are lined up in the same area, all used to form the bridge’s foundation.
A research initiative known as “The Lost Fleet” is currently underway to identify and precisely date the many Swedish military shipwrecks that lie at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
