Axmar Blue Park

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry I've been so behind on these blog posts. I really have no excuse, except that I've been out enjoying my time in Sweden! This post is about a visit to Axmar Blue Park, a dive park north of Stockholm. I went there in late July to go diving and learn more about the local underwater heritage.

My Guide

I took the train early on a Friday morning from Stockholm to Gävle, the small city closest to Axmar. There I met up with the man I've been in contact with via email, Bo (Bosse) Ulfhiem. Bosse is an archaeologist for the Gävle County Museum. His job for the museum includes doing fieldwork in Gävle county to check that any construction does not harm the cultural heritage and landmarks of the area. For example, a wind farm was being built recently, and he traveled to the site to be sure that the Iron Age ruins nearby wouldn't be harmed. He also is the contact person and main archaeologist for Axmar Blue Park.

Intro to Axmar Blue Park

Axmar Blue Park is a group of shipwrecks in the bay near the old Axmar Iron Works. This bay is sheltered from the Baltic Sea, and it has many wrecked barges from the 1700's and 1800's. The barges carried the iron products from the shore out to the Baltic Sea, where the iron was then loaded onto large ships to be transported. Some of the wrecks were intentionally sunk after they were no longer useful. Others were accidentally wrecked, and these still have large pieces of iron and other artifacts from their time.

Finding and Surveying the Wrecks

Bosse met me at the train station and we drove up to Axmar, about a 45 minute drive. We discussed how almost all of the wrecks at Axmar were discovered by the local diving club. (Note: I haven't explained this yet, but most recreational scuba diving in Sweden is done through dive clubs rather than people diving with centers or on their own. A group of people from one area, in this instance, from the county of Gävle, plan their own dives, own their own boats, tanks and other equipment, and all go diving in groups). When the Gävle dive club found these wrecks, they reported the wrecks' GPS coordinates to the Gävle County Museum, which is how Bosse got involved. Every time a wreck is found, it is his job as the marine archaeologist to identify and archive where these wrecks are. He is building a database of wrecks in the bay, not only so that they can find them later for further research, but so that people know of their existence and don't accidentally hit them while boating. They want the wrecks to stay preserved.

Diving first became popular in the region in the 1970's. Scuba diving was at its height in the 1990's, but now only the local dive club dives at Axmar's wrecks. Bosse said that all of the local divers are people who started diving in the 1970's. There are few young divers in Gävle, and it isn't really a growing sport. There are no dive centers in the area, so the divers in the Gävle dive club are the only ones with access to dive gear and boats in the region. Because there was so much diving in the 1990's in the area, the dive clubs found most of the wrecks in that decade. However, some wrecks have been found more recently. The 1990's is also when the field surveys of the Axmar wrecks started through the Gävle County Museum.

They currently have identified around 20 wrecks in this bay, twelve of which have been well-surveyed and mapped. However, Bosse thinks there are likely many more wrecks in the area relating to Axmar Iron Works, both in the bay and out in the deeper waters of the Baltic Sea. Finding more is a question of time, money and resources.

Axmar Iron Works

Once we arrived at Axmar, Bosse took me to the Iron Works Mill and told me about Axmar Iron Works' history. The town of Axmar became Axmar Iron Works in 1672 because of three factors: the region had plenty of trees to provide coal, there was a river for generating power, and the town had access to a bay to transport the iron. Axmar Iron Works mostly exported to England, and its iron was typically used for making cannons. Axmar Iron Works ran for over two hundred years, and it officially shut down in 1927. However, most of the operation ended much earlier, in the late 1800's.

Axmar has significant on-land cultural heritage, all of which is maintained by local volunteers. The on-land heritage, including the Iron Works Mill and the owner's estate, is very well-preserved because after the company shut down, no new industry came in to tear down the buildings. I was impressed that this small town was so dedicated to maintaining these heritage sites without need for much support from the government or other programs.

The Iron Works Mill is currently a community building used for events like concerts. In fact, the night before I visited Axmar, an Irish country musician played there. Bosse said his friend got married in the space. Although the building was locked when we arrived, a local man came by and let us in. I thought the building was a really cool space. There were signs all around (in Swedish, of course, so I didn't understand much) explaining some of the history. The mill and buildings of the owner's estate (I'll talk about the estate below) were partially built from a greenish stone which is refuse from making iron.

The Iron Works Mill

Axmar Iron Works

Theater inside Iron Works

And here's where they made the iron! 

The Shore of Axmar

After visiting the Iron Works Mill, we went to the shore of the bay, where the boats used to pick up the iron for shipment.

Crane used to load the barges with the iron

One of the old storage buildings, built in the 1700's, is now a popular restaurant. In fact, most tourists who go to Axmar are Swedes on holiday who travel to this town specifically to eat at the restaurant.

Storage Building from 1700's, now a restaurant

The owner of the restaurant is really interested in the cultural heritage at Axmar, according to Bosse. While we were waiting for the driver of our boat to arrive, Bosse showed me the upstairs of the restaurant. There is this room that is like a small, unofficial museum for Axmar Blue Park. It has historical information on some of the wrecks, a model of one of the smaller wrecks, and a really cool touch-screen map which shows the identified local shipwrecks. Even though most visitors to Axmar aren't divers, this area lets them at least know that these wrecks are out there nearby.

Touch-Screen Map of Axmar
(yes, it is off-center for some reason)

Sailing is also very popular in this area. Like in Lake Mälaren, there are facilities on the islands for the sailors, including restrooms, showers, waste sites and even BBQ pits. A few years ago these sites were so popular that someone was employed full-time to maintain them. Now this position is part-time. It is quite clear that Swedes really value maritime activities, especially sailing, in the Axmar area.

The Bay at Axmar

View from shore

There are many wrecks out there!

Diving at Axmar

That afternoon Bosse and I went to one of the dive sites to see four intentionally-sunken barges from the 1800's. Bosse had arranged for a friend of his to take us to the site with his boat. This guy was an older man who had dived a lot in the area, and now whenever Bosse comes up to dive--often because some archaeologists are visiting the Gävle museum and want to see the wrecks, and sometimes because Knafel Traveling Fellows are interested in underwater heritage ;-) --this man provides transportation. The wrecks were right off the shore of an island, so we did a shore dive.

Dive site at Axmar Blue Park

I should note here that most (meaning basically all) divers in Sweden dive with dry-suits. I'm used to diving in warmer climates, but I did invest in a 7mm wetsuit for this year, because I knew I would be in some chillier waters. However, I was not about to shell out a thousand dollars for a dry-suit. I was a bit worried about being really, really cold during this dive, but I was in luck, because the dive was quite shallow. The deepest I went was 14 feet, and we were often around 4 or 5 feet under the water. Every time I went below 10 feet that water got noticeably colder, but I was never uncomfortable. Really, it was no worse (in fact, it was much more comfortable) than swimming off the coast of New Hampshire in July!

Our dive lasted about 40 minutes, and I had a fantastic time seeing these four wrecks. The visibility was about five feet, and because we were protected from the Baltic Sea by the island, there was no current and there were no waves. The boats were sunken parallel to each other, so during the dive we went from one ship to the next, hovered over a few, and then looped back.

The wrecks were used as barges in the 1800's to transport the iron from shore to the bigger ships. However, these boats were actually old sailboats, which later were stripped and converted to barges. I could still see the capstan on one of the ships. There were some pieces of rope down there, too.

This is the kind of sailing ship that was converted
into a barge for the iron works

Below are some of the pictures I took on the dive. This was my first time using my underwater case for my digital camera, so I took a lot of pictures. Sorry that the exposure is a little off. The visibility made it tricky to get a sharp image.

Pieces of wood from the wrecks

Part of a wreck

That's me! (You'll have to take my word for it)

Me!
(Up close and personal, because the visibility wasn't the best)

The side of one of the wrecks

An eel on a barge

A capstan

Looking up at piece of the wreck

The side of a wreck

Side of wreck

Piece of wreck

Rope on wreck

Piece of rope

More rope

More pieces of the wreck

On the way back from the dive, the boat captain took us to a place where he said he had seen some wreck pieces in the shallow water. We could definitely see some pieces of wood down there, and Bosse postulated that there might be a wreck a little off the shore of that island. It made me realize that while many wrecks had been found in the bay, there still were so many more to find.

You can't really see, but there's some wood
beneath the surface here

This is where there might be another wreck

Underwater Preservation

As you can see in the pictures above, these boats are in pretty good shape for being underwater for so long. Shipwrecks in Sweden are actually very well-preserved in the water for three reasons. First, there are no wood-eating worms or other creatures in these waters to destroy the wrecks. Second, the water in the Baltic Sea has very low salinity. And third, the water stays relatively cold all year round. Unlike other areas of the world, where a wreck left unattended will corrode, dissolve, and be ruined by the underwater elements, wrecks in the Baltic Sea, if left alone, remain in fairly impressive condition. 

However, in this area, the wrecks are in danger of eventually being ruined because of the lowering of the Baltic Sea. Each year the bay freezes over, which means the ice destroys anything within one meter of the surface. So as the sea slowly lowers, the potential to destroy the shallow wrecks raises each year.

Nordic Blue Parks

Axmar Blue Park is actually part of a larger collection of dive parks in the Sweden, Finland and Norway, called Nordic Blue Parks. The program was started in Finland, and when they approached the Swedish National Maritime Museum about including a Swedish dive park, Axmar joined the Blue Parks. Nordic Blue Parks' goal is to highlight the impressive historical finds through shipwrecks as well as the underwater plant life near these wrecks. On their website, you can find the wrecks in the dive parks on a map and learn about the history and flora surrounding different dive sites. Bosse explained to me that many people hear about pollution and other issues in the Baltic Sea and view the body of water in a negative way, perceiving the sea to be a flat, dead area. The Nordic Blue Parks promote the historical and biological significance of the Baltic Sea.

The Estate

Before driving back to Gävle, Bosse showed me the Axmar Iron Works' owner's estate. Now it consists of some gardens and a few remaining buildings, like a mill, some storage, and a summer gazebo. In the last few years the river which winds through the estate was restored by local volunteers. They also tend to the landscaping of the estate.

The estate at Axmar

The river on the estate

Example of iron-refuse used in buildings in the area

Old building on estate

Future Plans for Axmar

On the drive back, Bosse and I discussed the future plans for Axmar Blue Park. Right now, tourists go to Axmar for the restaurant, and while they are there they sort of stumble upon the on-land heritage sites, like the mill and the estate. Once they know about their existence, they are interested to learn more, but the cultural heritage is not what draws people to Axmar. In the future, they'd like to have Axmar's cultural heritage be better-known.

Also, only local divers access the wrecks at Axmar, and because of this, these impressive pieces of underwater cultural heritage are not being appreciated by a very large audience. They would like to attract more tourist divers to the area. However, in order to attract tourists interested in shipwrecks, they want to have more information available on the history of these wrecks.

The current plan is to keep building the Axmar Blue Park website, so that anyone who wants to dive at Axmar can go online to download information. For each wreck, they want to have a diagram which points out historical points of interest on one side and interesting flora on the other. Bosse gave me an example of this, and I think it would be a great resource to someone who wanted to dive an Axmar wreck.

Diagram example for website
This side shows the flora around a wreck

We also discussed the merit of other options, like having signs on the closest shore or even having plaques underwater. It would be great to have a small museum on the main shore of Axmar, with historical contextualization as well as pictures and videos of the shipwrecks for non-divers. But of course, everything costs money and takes time. Without diving tourism already in place, it's hard to know that the investment would be worthwhile. I asked about snorkeling, as many of the wrecks were very shallow. Bosse said snorkeling in Sweden is not very common. I suppose the poor visibility might make seeing wrecks from the surface more difficult, too.

 Bosse and his colleagues are still in the process of deciding what would be the best end-result for Axmar Blue Park. He asked my opinions, as an outsider visiting Axmar. I really enjoyed brainstorming with him, and our conversation made me appreciate that these struggles are probably common for many regions with shipwrecks. When explaining my project and other destinations to Bosse, he was very interested in how other countries are approaching these issues. I was pleased to know that my project could actually have some important relevance--by visiting all these places this year, I will have the opportunity to share ideas and maybe even connect people to other colleagues with similar dilemmas. I told Bosse that I'd keep him updated on my findings. While it's not required for the Knafel Travel Fellowship that I have a 'final product,' I'd like to create some sort of report which I could share with Bosse and other people I meet throughout my journey. It only seems fair to give back to the people who help me throughout the year, and with this travel fellowship I have the unique opportunity to gather and share information from six different countries.

Another future goal for Axmar Blue Park is simply to continue to find wrecks, document their coordinates, and research their history. By going through old archives, Bosse's colleagues at the Gävle museum are trying to learn the names of the ships, where they were going, the exact dates they were used and wrecked, and whatever else they can learn.

Take-Home Message

As we drove back into Gävle at the end of the day, Bosse explained the main goal for Axmar Blue Park. All of this preservation and research is done so that they can display how the maritime heritage connects with the on-land heritage from the Axmar Iron Works. The town already has a well-preserved iron works mill, some outbuildings, and the owner's estate. What they are working on now is connecting the underwater cultural heritage, meaning the shipwrecks used for the iron works, with the already appreciated on-land cultural heritage. In the end, they want a visitor to Axmar to understand the important roles of both the land and the sea for the era of the Axmar Iron Works.

Coming Next...

When I was dropped off in Gävle, I stayed the night and explored the city the next day. I'll write about that in my next post!

~Kristine