The spice was found in a centuries-old shipwreck

Lund, Sweden –

Archaeologists say they have discovered a “unique” cache of well-preserved spices, ranging from saffron threads to pepper and ginger, on the wreck of a royal ship that sank off Sweden’s Baltic coast more than 500 years ago.

The wreck of the Gripsund, owned by King Hans of Denmark and Norway, has been around off Ronneby since 1495 when it caught fire and sank when the king attended a political meeting ashore in Sweden.

Rediscovered by sport divers in the 1960s, sporadic excavations of the ship have been carried out in recent years. Previous dives have recovered large objects such as shapes and wood. Now, an excavation led by Brendan Foley, an archaeologist at Lund University, has found the spice buried in the boat’s silt.

“The Baltic Sea is strange – oxygen-poor, low-temperature, low-salinity, and many organic things are so well preserved in the Baltic Sea that they won’t be so well preserved anywhere else in the global ocean system,” Foley said. “But to find such spices is very unusual.”

The spice would have been a symbol of high status, because only the wealthy could afford products such as saffron or cloves imported from outside Europe. They were traveling with King Hans while he was attending the meeting in Sweden.

“This is the only archaeological context in which we have found crocuses. It is very unique, very special,” said Mikael Larsson, a researcher at Lund University who studied the findings.

(Reporting by Tom Little; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)