16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

57 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Jim Hansson Swedish national maritime and transport museums, Stockholm, Sweden A unique shipwreck found with a unique cargo In December 2017 a ship wreck was found in the Stockholm archipelago. The wreck is unusually well preserved for a ship built with clinker technique. It also has its cargo still in place. There are a little over 30 barrels visible, mostly con- taining so called osmund iron. No similar wreck has ever before been found in Swedish waters. The date of the ship is based on dendro. It date´s the wreck to 1540´s (prov- enance Stockholm) and has been repaired in the 1550´s (provenance, south of Finland). The wreck has three masts (the main mast still standing in its original place) and all it’s the rigging seems to be intact at the site. It seems that the wreck is almost totally intact so it’s a unique ship wreck in many ways. Iron exports was then, and still is, one of Sweden’s most important exports but the knowledge of historic cargo ships, the trade routes and the quality of the iron is almost unknown. This ship is one of the most important finds to date and can tell us much more about how the iron was transported, how export was organized and what kind of ships were constructed for iron cargo. We can also re- construct the rig of a three masted clinker built cargo ship which will give us more knowledge about how a big cargo ship sailed. Based on the archaeological surveys this paper discusses the ship wreck, its construction, the rigging and the cargo and the possibilities for further study of the history of the Swedish iron industry through a ship wreck still fully equipped and comparable to a time capsule from 1550.