In 1495, the Danish King Hans set out for Sweden by ship to claim the Swedish crown. On board: a cut sturgeon that was considered a royal fish and a prestigious delicacy. The fish should probably enrich the menu at the planned feast and make an impression. However, it never reached its destination, because the royal flagship sank – and the disruptive parts remained in its wreck.
It was an extremely important journey for the Danish King Hans: when he set off from his capital Copenhagen to the Swedish city of Kalmar in the spring of 1495, he had nothing less than another crown in mind. At a meeting with Elder Sten Sture, he hoped to be able to assert his claim and receive rule over Sweden. The gifts and goods that his flagship Gribhunden had on board were correspondingly precious.
A sturgeon in the shipwreck
But an accident occurred off the coast of southern Sweden: a fire broke out on board the ship and the gribhounds sank with all their cargo. The king was able to cross over ashore in time, but his ship remained at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and was forgotten. It wasn’t until the 1970s that scuba divers came across the wreck of the medieval ship. “The structure of the ship and the materials on board were exceptionally well preserved thanks to the low-oxygen, cool and low-salt environment at the bottom of the Baltic Sea,” explain Stella Macheridis from Lund University and her colleagues. “The wreck gives us detailed insights into the construction techniques, life on board a royal ship and everyday practices in late medieval Scandinavia.”
Among the numerous goods aboard the Gribhunde were some wooden barrels, one of which had an unusual content: it contained numerous pieces of a fish cut up and large scales. Their analysis showed relatively quickly that this fish residue had to be a broken up sturgeon – and therefore a very special fish even then. While marine animals, which were heavier than a man, were considered the property of the king at the time, sturgeon had a special role: “They always belonged to the king, even if they were lighter,” explain the researchers. “They were royal property per se and were subject to the king’s hunting rights.”
A fish as a propaganda tool
The catch of such a fish was correspondingly prestigious. In the case of the Gribshunden find, there is another aspect: as measurements of the scales and DNA analyzes have shown, this sturgeon was not only two meters long, it also belongs to the species Acipenser oxyrhinchus – the Atlantic sturgeon. This sturgeon species is now only found off the east coast of North America, while the European sturgeon Acipenser sturio dominates in European waters. In the Middle Ages, however, the Atlantic sturgeon still existed in the Baltic Sea – as the discovery of its relics in the flagship of the Danish King Hans confirms.
Due to the rather coarse dismemberment of the valuable fish, Macheridis and her colleagues suspect that catching the sturgeon was an unplanned stroke of luck. It was probably caught by sailors aboard the Gribhunde – on the way or just before the start of the voyage off the coast of Copenhagen. “Since King Hans was on board his flagship at the time, he should not have missed the great value of this catch,” say the scientists. It is obvious that he gave the order to conserve the catch in order to impress his host with this rarity. Because sturgeons were not only sought after because of their size and rarity, their swim bladder was also used to produce glue that was used to fix gold leaf on parchment or other surfaces during gilding.
“The sturgeon was thus a propaganda tool – just like the entire ship,” explains marine archaeologist Brendan Foley from Lund University. “Everything on this ship served a political function, which is what makes this discovery so interesting. It provides us with important information about this crucial moment in nation building in Europe, at a time when politics, religion and economy – almost everything – began to change. “
Source: Lund University; Technical article: Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, doi: 10.1016 / j.jasrep.2020.102480