Beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea, something strange was lurking in the wreckage of an ancient ship. A marine archaeologist and researcher at Lund University in Sweden named Brendan Foley was cleaning off the mud from a wooden tankard wedged under some firewood when the tankard started moving by itself.
It rose quickly toward the surface as if it was trying to escape from the sea. When Foley flipped the drinking vessel over, bubbles of gas trapped inside the artifact were suddenly released.
They were remnants from the decomposition of the beer or mead that the tankard held more than 500 years ago.
“The tankard must have been dropped by someone on board when the ship exploded,” Foley said. “To be able to hold something like that—it’s a direct connection to the people in that event.”
In 1495, the Gribshunden, a well-preserved royal Danish flagship, sank off the coast of Sweden, likely due to a gunpowder explosion.
The vessel personally belonged to King Hans of Denmark and Norway. It went down on his way to a political summit in Kalmar, Sweden, where he planned to unify the entire Nordic region.
The ship sank at anchor while King Hans was ashore. All the valuable goods that the king and his nobles brought with them were lost.
Local divers originally discovered the wreck in the early 1970s. However, archaeologists did not show interest in it until 2001.
The Gribshunden is an incredibly unique find because of its excellent preservation and historical background. It represents the first generation of artillery-carrying warships that resembled the large vessels Vasco da Gama and Columbus used to reach India and the Americas, respectively.
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The ships’ designs allowed for long-distance travel, which led to Europeans conquering and colonizing many parts of the world.
The Gribshunden is in much better condition than other ships from that era. The low salinity of the Baltic Sea has prevented wood-eating shipworms from munching through the hull.
So far, Foley and colleagues have only excavated between one and two percent of the wreck site, yet they have been able to bring a wealth of artifacts to the surface, including multiple wooden crossbows, early handguns, and other weaponry. The collection marks the start of the transition to gunpowder weapons.
Crossbows were more dependable and were better for hunting, but the handguns may have served as a status symbol or a sign of military power.
The archaeologists also fished out a purse containing silver coins. They determined when and where the coins were minted, highlighting a shift away from trade systems to the use of money.
They even uncovered an assortment of spices, such as cloves, peppercorns, ginger pieces, and lumps of saffron.
These exotic luxuries would have been imported from as far away as present-day Indonesia. The spices were meant to season the fanciful feasts at King Hans’ political summit.
Furthermore, an analysis of the tankard showed that it was constructed from a single piece of alder wood. It was originally painted red, and the shape of a crown was carved near the base.
Its interior smelled faintly of pine, suggesting that it once carried a pine-flavored beer. It also does not look like any other drinking vessel from that time, meaning that it could have been made specifically for the Gribshunden.
For now, the Gribshunden is keeping archaeologists busy, as there are plenty of artifacts to provide them with a treasure trove of new information.
