I juni 1950 förliste Ormen Friske, en kopia av ett vikingaskepp, på Nordsjön. Alla de 15 unga svenskarna ombord drunknade. Döda kroppar och vrakspillror spolades upp på den nordfrisiska och jylländska kusten.
Ormen Friske hade enligt vittnen av en slump hamnat i ett regn av amerikanska flygbomber, som hindrat skeppet att nå nödhamn.
Trots påstötningar från tyskt håll och från anhöriga till de omkomna utreddes aldrig olyckan av svenska myndigheter. Istället tystades omständigheterna ner och skulden till haveriet lades på påstådda brister hos besättning och båt.
Med stöd av dokument i svenska och utländska arkiv, privata papper och foton, bevarade föremål från skeppet samt intervjuer ges i denna samtidsarkeologiska studie för första gången en samlad bild av dramat, dess efterspel och efterlämnade minnen.
Half-carvels are vessels on which the lowest part of the hull is built with overlapping strakes of planking, referred to as clinker
construction, and the uppermost parts of the hull are constructed with the planks laid side by side, in the carvel fashion. These
mixed planking constructions occurred in the 16th century (as far as we know), but became very common in later centuries.
The aim of this article is to highlight the existence of different versions of clinker construction, and to discuss some reasons
behind the selection of the technique.
Historical archaeology may be characterized by an intricate relationship between, written sources and material remains. In research focusing on wrecks, this often results in descriptions of the events associated with one particular ship. These are narratives written from a historical horizon, where written sources provide the explanation to material remains. The aim of this paper is to show that a combination of material remains and written sources may be used as a departure point for a discussion on social conditions on board merchant ships in a more general sense.
The case used is the fluit Anna Maria, launched in 1694 and which foundered in Dalarö harbour in 1709. The site is ideal for such a study, as it has been surveyed archaeologically on several occasions since the 1960s at the latest in all of 2010, and partly because historical research into the written accounts have been made. Taken together the material gathered enables a unique opportunity to reconstruct and to study the everyday environment on board a large fluitship.
Riksäpplet deals with a shipwreck that has a neglected position in the grand narrative of the history of the Swedish navy. The story of its destiny and the missing accounts in scholarly and popular works in history says something about heritage processes within Swedish maritime archaeology.
On 5 June 1676 Riksäpplet came loose and adrift from its moorings outside Dalarö Sea fortress. The hull struck a rock and sank. The loss was considered both ignominious and embarrassing and the ship’s fate has been overlooked in all major history books. The rock onto which Riksäpplet sank was named ‘Äpplet’ after the incident, and the wreck itself has become an integrated component of the underwater seascape. As a consequence the wreckage has never enjoyed a proper ‘discovery’ or undergone documentation under the sensational forms that many other famous shipwrecks have, even though they have sunk in more inconvenient places.
In Eriksson’s study the official handling of Riksäpplet’s wrecked body is compared to the more wellknown ships Kronan and Svärdet, which both sank during battle only days before. Eriksson draws on different motifs and driving forces behind the study of naval wrecks from the period from his comparison, and the differences are discussed. Riksäpplet has never achieved a prominent position with the romanticising works of history that honour the national heroes and their deeds which are associated with this era of the Swedish Empire. The first half of the book thus sets out to unpack the ideas that have led to the relative disinterest in Riksäpplet in comparison to other shipwrecks.
The second half of the book sets out to analyse Riksäpplet from a specific archaeological perspective, with focus on the ship as material culture. Eriksson’s departure is to explore the relatively low budget fieldwork that has been done at the wreck site. He the combines those facts with a survey of the artefacts recovered from the wreck, of which all are kept in museum archives and private collections. This, in addition to his studies of preserved written correspondence concerning the construction of the ship, has brought new insights into seventeenth-century shipbuilding and how the balance between the global political superpowers affected this trade. In this context Riksäpplet has great potential to show how military alliances are materialized through ships’ architecture.
Early Modern warships are sometimes compared to floating palaces. The sculptural decoration on their transoms, galleries and beakheads follow a carefully thought out symbolic language that aimed to legitimize royal ambitions and claims to power. But merchant ships also carried elegantly carved ornaments and figures. However, the message conveyed by these sculptures was different from that of contemporary warships. Among early modern merchant ships the so-called fluyts hold a prominent position. Originating in the Netherlands, thousands of more or less identical ships were built during the 1600s and ensuing centuries. But despite the large number of ships built, surprisingly little information about their decoration has survived in our time. In recent years, several archaeological investigations of fluyts, have been carried out in the Baltic Sea which has resulted in new knowledge about the ships. It has been found that the decoration of the fluyts, just as on contemporary naval vessels, follow a clear pattern. The ship´s home port was communicated by its city coat of arms. Ships’ names such as the White Swan, The Rose or Crescent as well as familiar characters from the Bible were also represented by sculptures on the ship´s transom. But the sculptures served not only a practical purpose. Like the contemporary warships, they expressed their owners’ ideology and societal ambitions. Fluyts should perhaps not be compared to floating palaces; they are rather a counterpart to the merchants’neck-gabled houses in cities like Amsterdam.In the Swedish context, the vessels appear as a kind of billboard for a Dutch attitude towards trade. This article aims to discuss the message communicated by the fluyts’ exteriors against this fond. How did these ships affect the urban environment in which they were moored?
Svärdet (1663-1676) - a ship built in the Dutch manner. During the first half of the Seventeenth century the Swedish navy relied on Dutch master shipwrights who built ships in what was dubbed as ‘the Dutch manner’ Det holländska manéret. By the midcentury, the relations between the countries deteriorated to war. In this situation the Swedish Admirality sought for shipbuilding competence in England, which resulted in the introduction of the English manner – Det engelska manéret. In 2011 the remains of the ship Svärdet was discovered outside Öland. The ship was built 1660 to 1663 and sank during a battle in 1676. This paper presents the results from the initial survey of the wreck. Together with written sources and some preserved images of the ship it has been possible to get an impression of what the ship looked like. Focus of the paper is to present Svärdet as an example of one of the last ships built by the Dutch master shipwrights.
During the 16th century the naval ships were developed with increased size and a larger quantity of guns. When the Swedish ship Mars exploded and sank during action in 1564, she was one of the largest ships in the world. In 2011 the wreck was relocated outside the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. Thanks to the favorable conditions about two thirds of the hull are preserved which includes the stern with the large stern castle. The site thus offers a unique opportunity to study a state of the art warship from this period. The site has been surveyed during three seasons. This paper is based on these initial surveys and aims to present the kind of insights regarding 16th century naval architecture that Mars has revealed so far.
In 2003 a well-preserved shipwreck was found north of Dalarö in the Stockholm archipelago. In 2007 and 2008 the site was surveyed jointly by archaeologists from the Swedish National Maritime Museum, Södertörn University and the University of Southampton. The surface finds were inventoried and drawings produced of the hull structure, which measures 20 m between the posts. This paper presents the results of recording the hull. The original name of the ship, as well as the precise history of its demise, are unknown, but it appears to have been a small man-of-war, built and probably sunk in the late 17th century. It was possibly built in England, or at least in the English fashion of that time.