500-year-old shipwreck turns out to be oldest-of-its-kind find off Sweden. Take a look
Off the southern coast of Sweden sat the ever-shrinking remains of a once-grand ship. Theories about the wreckage had swirled for years, with some believing it to be a sunken Viking ship.
But no one had truly investigated the wreckage — until now.
Marine archaeologists plunged into the Baltic Sea near Landfjärden to explore the mysterious ship, dubbed Vrak 5, or Wreck 5, because it is one of five shipwrecks in the area, the Vrak Museum of Wrecks said in a Feb. 21 news release.
Wreck 5 sits on a relatively steep slope, with the front of the ship being about 22 feet shallower than the stern. With the current water levels, the shallowest part of the wreckage is about 6 feet underwater.
Marine archaeologists explored the wreckage and dated it to the 1480s, or possibly the 1460s with later repairs, the museum said. The large ship measures about 115 feet long and 33 feet wide with a typical mast in the center.
But the medieval ship’s most unique feature wasn’t its size or layout. It was its building technique.
Wreck 5 was built using a method known as caravel planking, where planks are placed end to end without overlapping, archaeologist and project leader Håkan Altrock said in the release. The approach seems expected today, but when Wreck 5 was first built, the most common shipbuilding method involved overlapping the planks.
Archaeologists identified Wreck 5 as the oldest known example of a caravel-style ship in the Nordic countries.
A photo shows a section of the 500-year-old wreck where the horizontal planks clearly look side by side. Some sections of planking are worn away but enough remain for archaeologists to consider the ship as an oldest-of-its-kind find.
Caravel planking became increasingly popular throughout the medieval era, because it enabled builders to make stronger, larger ships better able to withstand cannon-ball fire, the museum said.
Archaeologists plan to continue studying Wreck 5 and, hopefully, conducting some excavations of the site.
Landfjärden is a coastal town on the Baltic Sea in southern Sweden and a roughly 25-mile drive south from Stockholm.
Google Translate was used to translate the news release from the Vrak Museum of Wrecks.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 9:34 AM with the headline "500-year-old shipwreck turns out to be oldest-of-its-kind find off Sweden. Take a look."
