Do you expect to find cannonballs and artifacts aboard a shipwreck? Not Swedish diver Lars Einarsson and his team — they found a hunk of 340-year-old cheese onboard the wreck of the Kronan, a 126-gun warship that sank in 1676 off Sweden’s southeast coast.
Swedish Divers Find Stinky Cheese
Einarsson told the Swedish Kvällsposten that the group found a tin pressed into the clay of the seabed. While taking it to the surface, the drop in pressure allowed some of the smell to escape. Can you imagine the smell of 340-year-old cheese? Exactly. According to Einarsson, it was like a mixture of yeast and Roquefort. The team sent the tin to a lab for further analysis.
Although it’s probably the most unusual, it’s not the only thing the team found on the wreck. Their haul also included 14 gold coins, a diamond ring and a large amount of pharmaceuticals. The wreck, which was discovered in 1980 at 85 feet, 3.7 miles east of Hulterstad, is Sweden’s largest underwater archaeology project. So far divers have recovered over 30,000 artifacts.
