STORY: :: Finnish Heritage Agency
:: A 17th century Swedish warship wreck has been found off Finland’s coast
:: At Sea
:: June 16, 2025
:: Niklas Eriksson, Stockholm University
“We have realized that a lot of this ship still is preserved. It rests in very shallow water, but despite the fact that people have been salvaging the rig and the guns and so on after the wreckage, a lot of the ship is still preserved, although it has collapsed and disintegrated. But most of the ship is still down there.”
:: Digital 3D modeling has led researchers to consider it the ‘little sister’ of the iconic Vasa ship
:: Stockholm, Sweden
“And what has struck us when diving here is how similar it actually is to Vasa. It is a smaller version of Vasa, but it’s not small. It’s 35 meters between the stem and stern, so 35 meters in between here and Vasa would be 47, so it’s here somewhere. So it’s still quite a big, impressive ship”.
The shipwreck was discovered 50 years ago, but it is only now that Associate Professor Niklas Eriksson has been able to identify it thanks to a digital 3D model of the ship created by the Finnish Maritime Archaeological Society.
The ship measures 114 feet from stem to stern.
Falken, or The Falcon in English, was likely constructed by the same shipbuilder as Vasa in 1631, and sank under unclear circumstances after 20 years of service.
The Vasa ship famously sank in Stockholm during its maiden voyage in 1628 but was salvaged in 1961 and is on display at the Vasa Museum in the Swedish capital.
Researchers aim to uncover more details about the ship’s history, its crew and life aboard a 17th-century vessel through continued dives.