Discovering the 14th Century Thistle: A Key to Sweden’s Maritime History

To have a better image of the wreckage, it is now possible to have them a 3D overview. This digital model is produced by the archaeologists of the TRAK, thanks to photogrammetry (a technique which combines digital photographs so that their positions are reflected in three dimensions, explains LiveScience).

The five wrecks in the Landfjärden region

The Landfjärden region, a Swedish locality located south of Stockholm is known for its five wrecks discovered in the 1800s. According to specialists, they were all built during the Viking era, between 793 and 1066 after J.-C. However, a new study comes to contradict this theory.

Indeed, in 2024, the maritime archaeologists of Vrak, the Museum of Stockholm wrecks said that they would ultimately be much more recent. Four of them are now dated between 1600 and 1700. As for the fifth, the oldest, it would have been built in the 1460s.

Two different construction techniques

The curator of the museum and project manager Håkan Altrock explained in a press release that this ship was particularly large (35 meters long and 10 meters wide, yet it is not its main characteristic: the ship was built in a style “in Carvel”, or construction in Franc-Bord.

Construction in Franc-Bord is a construction technique which consists in assembling the boards of the hull so that they flush the neighboring boards, so that the entire surface of the shell is smooth, explains the curator of the museum. However, the Vikings used the clinker technique, superimposed wooden planks together.

wreckage, a key element to understand the transition between medieval and modern construction

This technique made the shell solid and flexible, however it quickly became obsolete when the ships began to equip themselves with cannons in the 15th century, since the ship's hull was not reinforced enough. The manufacturers therefore went to the construction technique in Franc-Bord.

This is why this wreck is so important: it was built right during the transition from one technique to another, a sort of transitional element which could allow archaeologists to know more about the maritime history so rich in Sweden. “” “We plan to request external funding for an excavation. This ship represents a fascinating link between medieval and modern naval construction”Said Håkan Alrock.