Medieval ship found in Norway's biggest lake | Hacker News Reader

Medieval ship found in Norway's biggest lake

sciencenorway.no

265 pointsmooreds89 comments

25 years or so ago, I worked on a tiny part of software for testing of what I think is a precursor for that mapping submersible. I did a two week project for Norwegian Defence Research Establishment to write software to let them relay scaled down real-time mapping data for debugging from the small boat tracking the submersible to land or a nearby bigger ship...

It was limited by wanting it to be cheap, so we used GSM data modems to transmit a 2400 bps stream of the map data, using a slight variation over z-modem to retransmit blocks on error, and code to reconnect and continue the transmission from the last successful block if we lost connection.

I'm sure that code was ditched many years ago, as it makes no sense with modern hotspots, but it was a fun project to work on, and I got to go out on the tracking boat when we tested it.

Tangentially related to this article, but if you're ever in Sweden, I recommend checking out the Vasa Museum [1]. It's a 1600's ship that was pulled off the sea floor.

[1] https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

I think it is a very good recommendation. But it is worth adding that Sweden is a big country.

Edit: spelling

Eh, it's half the size of British Columbia. If you're visiting for more than a few days, it seems reasonable to travel across the country to see something interesting.

The size of the Equator is zero. But getting around the earth requires a lot of time!

Point taken, but Malmo to Karesuando is only a three day drive (assuming a modest pace, one driver, and good weather.)

> but Malmo to Karesuando is only a three day drive

Which is a lot in Europe (e.g. driving from Warsaw to Barcelona would take about the same)

And that is reasonable if you think a country should be seen through car windows. If I have, say, a week to visit a country, I will definitely not use three of those days driving.

That makes it seem big, I don't think people realize just how far out places like Dease Lake, Dawson Creek and Terrace are.

And then going beyond, for days, outside of BC. My son and his girlfriend went to work for a few months in Eagle Plains, YT. I had thought of northern BC as a long ways away, but then plotted out their route that just kept going, and going...

It's just about the size of California.

But almost every international traveller will arrive in Stockholm, so it's not crazy to assume they'll be within range of Vasa.

Definitly have to go there one day. Also a huge, and well worth it, time sink is Oslo's museum island.

I saw it last August, it's pretty amazing. It was the most heavily armed ship in the world when it set sail, sadly it was so imbalanced it sunk within an hour.

Vasa is almost a must-see recommendation for folks working in an engineering/project background. It was such a spectacular failure and for reasons that will likely feel all too familiar for anyone working in enterprise.

Wait, is Vasa the Ship or the Museum? Was the ship or the museum the failure?

Edit: Thank you all!

The Vasa Museum is all about the ship named Vasa - the ship was a fantastical failure, the museum is doing quite well as far as I know. :)

(The museum spends a lot of time documenting "how could this have gone so wrong?")

The ship was a gigantic failure due to serious design flaws.

The project to build it was a gigantic failure and caused the Wasa's eventual demise.

The ship sank during its maiden voyage.

right in the harbor!

One of the Titanic-era trans-atlantic luxury ships added so much marble to the first class deck and cabins that the ship was in danger of capsizing. Don't recall what happened to it.

Thanks, going to Sweden next summer and this sounds amazing!

Vasa was awesome. I also recommend some of the ferry tours out of Stockholm.

I spent three weeks in Stockholm and built a four day trip to Odda (Norway) as well, where I flew from Stockholm to Bergen and took a bus/ferry to Odda. Awesome chance to get submerged in the fjords, and the Trolltunga[1] is only a few miles north of Odda.

[1] https://www.visitnorway.com/places-to-go/fjord-norway/the-ha...

Think it's one of my favorite museums ever. I thought I was "just quickly gonna watch some old boat". Ended up staying there for hours, so much interesting. I recommend tagging along on the (free) guides. Gives much background and points out so many interesting details on the ship.

Trivia: The Vasa served as role-model for "The Flying Dutchman" in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies — also a ship that sunk and was risen again.

The ships in the movies were inspired by real-world ships, and the team was helped by an expert on tall ships. When given the plans for one ship, the expert exclaimed: "This design does not look seaworthy. Is it really based on a real ship?". "Yes, it is called the Vasa".

When I was visiting Sweden a friend of mine took me here and it was indeed a super awesome and surreal experience.

And the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark [1]

[1] https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/

Here's a YouTube video showing a 3D model of the ship made by Sonar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6pS981CbDc

"located at a depth of about 1,350 feet (411 meters) and was captured in sonar imagery...The imagery revealed the ship measured 33 feet (10 meters) long."

That's a pretty deep lake..

That is really deep. Lake Superior’s deepest point is only 1,332 feet.

Lake Inferior, more like.

The serious answer is that Lake Superior is named not for its area or volume, but for its upper altitude / upstream position relative to the other lakes.

Interesting! There's a few lakes in BC that are 400m+, and Quesnel Lake is 511m (1677'). I guess I had assumed that Superior was deep as well.

It is! Interestingly, it’s only the fourth deepest lake in Norway. It’s deeper than Lake Superior both in mean and maximum depth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_by_depth

Turns out that the so named lake is in fact not superior by depth.

If anyone is wondering why it's called that

In the 17th century, the first French explorers approached the great inland sea by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron; they referred to their discovery as le lac supérieur (the upper lake, i.e. above Lake Huron). Some 17th-century Jesuit missionaries referred to it as Lac Tracy (for Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy).[16] After taking control of the region from the French in the 1760s following their defeat in the French and Indian War, the British anglicized the lake's name to Superior, "on account of its being superior in magnitude to any of the lakes on that vast continent".[17]

(wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior)

It is still the largest lake by surface area.

While we're at it, Ontario used to be "Upper Canada" (from the POV of the Saint Lawrence river) and Quebec "Lower Canada". I.e. the naming scheme is even somewhat consistent.

Strictly speaking, the Kaspian Sea is the largest lake by surface area in the world (by almost 300 000km^2). Lake Superior is only the largest freshwater lake.

A little off topic: Do anybody know of a list of biggest lake per country?

Good use case for a Wikidata query: https://w.wiki/66oN

Thanks, I guess. What a bewildering site that was. Its certainly a very obtuse and hard to use query tool

Cool list, thanks. We were camped near Seton Lake this summer as it's somewhat nearby and I had no idea that it's apparently the 24th deepest lake in the world. The things you learn on here.

I live a few hours from Crater Lake, the deepest one in the US. Beautiful spot to visit - just drive south on 97 and take a right when the sign indicates Crater Lake.

No. 24 Lake Tinn is where the German production of heavy water was sunk in an operation during WWII.

Seriously. That got me curious so I looked it up and the deepest lake in the world is in Sibera and it's over a mile deep...

Yup - Lake Baikal. Holds about 20% of the world’s fresh water.

20% of world's surface fresh water.

> Surface water is water located on top of land forming terrestrial (inland) waterbodies, and may also be referred to as blue water, opposed to the seawater and waterbodies like the ocean.

You made it sound like "surface water" is literally just counting water close to the surface of the body of water, but it's basically any lake/river, so still impressive.

> Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, more than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. It is also the world's deepest lake, with a maximum depth of 1,642 metres (5,387 feet; 898 fathoms), and the world's oldest lake, at 25–30 million years.

I don’t think they made it sound like that, they just used the word, if you don’t know the definition it’s on you?

They are distinguishing between water located on the surface and the water that is located in the hollow at the center of the Earth, where King Kong and dinosaurs live on to this day.

I wonder how they experience gravity down there.

If you're standing on the inside surface of a sphere with a hollow, you should not experience any gravity. It's pretty important for supporting King Kong's body-weight, normal 1g would be hell on his knee joints.

In comparison to ground water, which is located in aquifers, dirt, caves, etc.

Yeah! Its deepest point is only 10 m shallower than the deepest point of the Baltic Sea!

That was well before their modern practice of applying a large barcode to the sides of naval vessels, allowing them to simply, ahem, Scandinavian.

Scan den af i gen

Possibly medieval. As the first sentence says, it might be from 1850.

Odd, but the second image of the sunken ship with the large area aft (where the captain's quarters was located) gave me strong vibes from Tintin's "The Secret of the Unicorn," which I read as a kid a long time ago. It concerned a ship from the 17th century with what feels like a similar overall shape. I'm sure that style spread across several centuries of ship making...

Strange thing to bubble up.

There's a really great museum here in the UK for the Mary Rose which was a warship used by King Henry VIII's navy in the early 1500s that sank in combat. Only part of the ship remains, but many artefacts were found with the ship, https://maryrose.org/the-artefacts/1/

While finding the ship is cool enough you have to wonder what else might be down there... The artefacts found with the Mary Rose give us a huge amount of insight into Tudors and are arguably far more valuable than the ship itself.

The good thing is that if any country in the world would have the capabilities of lifting that ship it would be Norway. But then again, maybe that's why they found it in the first place.

Why is this? Is Norway famed for finding and lifting ships? Presumably Norway found it because it's in a lake in Norway?

I can't speak to Norway's penultimate ability to find and raise shipwrecks, but in general the Nordic countries plus the Netherlands have a strong history of shipbuilding. This includes technical knowledge and know-how with all things related to ships.

In a Eurocentric point of view, the Dutch are probably the most famous for their capabilities[0].

[0] https://www.historytoday.com/archive/dutch-shipbuilding-gold...

I'm guessing the parent might be referring to the fact that Norway is an outlier regarding government finances [0]. They can afford it.

[0] https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-financial-wealt...

Well if they need help they could always ask their neighbor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

It is actually. Norway has a large offshore oil and gas industry, and because of this it has a lot of companies that specialize in underwater work.

When the Kursk submarine sank in 2000, the Russian navy was unable to access it for a long time, and eventually, a Norwegian team was asked to attempt a rescue, over some objections of the navy.

"Norwegian divers" became something of a meme in Russia. When the Ostankino tower caught fire shortly after the Kursk incident, the gallows-humor type joke was that some "Nowegian climbers" should be invited for the rescue.

It was a Dutch company that raised the Kursk. Maybe the employees were Norwegian

Norway assisted in rescue efforts for the sailors abord the Kursk:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20110101161935/http://nucnews.ne...>

The Dutch completed the recovery of the submarine itself.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20031122015529/https://www.smit....>

Different roles.

Links via Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141...>

> The good thing is that if any country in the world would have the capabilities of lifting that ship it would be Norway.

AFAIK most of the manufacturers of Atmospheric Diving Suits, which presumably you would need to raise this, are actually in Canada and the U.S.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_diving_suit

It is also worth noting that the location of the shipwreck, at the bottom of Lake Mjøsa at 410 meters deep, may have played a role in its preservation. The cold, oxygen-poor waters at the bottom of the lake may have helped to slow down the decomposition process, potentially allowing the shipwreck to remain intact for centuries.

I'm curious to know what kind of microorganisms survived throughout the past several centuries throughout the medieval ages to today.

Particularly, I wonder if diseases can exist on particles of these ships and have evolved throughout the years.

We were hiking 700km from Oslo to Trondheim and spent several days along the Mjøsa. The lake just didn't end, love it.

Thinking there were such undiscovered treasures near, makes you wonder what is near what we also don't perceive.

That sounds like an epic hiking trip. Can you share more detail about the specific route and accommodation etc? Do you happen to have a write up anywhere? Cheers!

Likely the pilgrim's trail. Oslo to Trondheim is the most popular of St. Olav's Ways.

Gudbrandsdalsleden - https://pilegrimsleden.no/en/trails/gudbrandsdalsleden

The eastern route includes a trip on Skibladner, a steamboat on the aforementioned Lake Mjøsa.

All of western Europe has really well developed pilgrim trails. I hiked the coastal one in Portugal a few years ago that leads into the main Spanish ones.

As I understand it, the Nordic pilgrim trails aren't anywhere near as well developed as ones closer to Camino de Santiago.

The St. Olav's Ways trails were only (re)established in the 1990s, and as I understand it, only a couple thousand people do it each year. (My sister and I were talking about doing it this last summer, but plans didn't work out.)

I also read in Nat Geo this last summer that Italy is working on setting up a pilgrimage route along the Appian Way. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/reviving-e...

I think this is true, apologies if I oversold them a bit. The Portuguese one I did was also being built so we had to take detours at time. Sometimes it was unclear, but at the same time there were posters next to the road on how it was going to look soon.

Yes.

Possibly medieval. It might be from 1850.

> “Mjøsa is like a mini-ocean, or a really large fjord,” says marine archaeologist Øyvind Ødegård from NTNU.

I cringe every time people call a lake a fjord.

Well, he said it “is like” a fjord, not that it is one.

But truth to be told, in some parts of Norway, the word “fjord” can refer to a narrow fresh water lake, often with steep sides. Moreover, some Norwegian lakes have names ending in -fjord (or -fjorden, being the definite form). Randsfjorden and Tyrifjorden are two examples.

Can't wait for the Black Metal scene to hear about this, good albums coming!

Serious question but why did someone down vote this lol?

> The job was to find possible explosives and ammunition that may have been dumped in the lake by an ammunition factory which is said to have done so between the 1940s and up until the 70s.

I know the operative word here is "possible," but what kind of discussion decides this is the best option for disposing of ordinance over a period of thirty years?

The US did it for much longer off the coast of Southern California and other places