Blog.

Modern Conflict Archaeology day with students from Hankoniemen Lukio and Hangö Gymnasium

On Saturday 12th of September I met up with junior and senior students from both highschools in Hanko at the Hanko Front Museum. The day...

British 55 (13,9mm) Boys anti-tank rifle stopped Soviet reinforcements in the archipelago

The first evidence of the use of British 55 (13,9mm) Boys Anti-Tank Rifles in the WW2 (1941) battles for the islands in the Hanko...

A forgotten WW2 grave site found and documented

After some really hard work we can now conclude that we have found the final resting place of thirteen Soviet soldiers killed in July...

Searching for a lost WW2 massgrave of 13 Soviet soldiers

We are at it again, looking for the remains of KIA soldiers from 1941. The weather is windy and gray but not very rainy so our search got...

A forgotten grave of a German "Kriegsmarine" soldier in the archipelago?

Today an article was published in the local newspaper about the repatriation/reburial of the seven KIA Soviet soldiers discovered near...

Reburial ceremony of 7 Soviet soldiers

Today we attended the reburial ceremony of 7 KIA Soviet soldiers that our team found and excavated between 2018 and 2019. The ceremony...

War dead, battlegrounds and more...

02.09.2020 Wednesday (day three).Today we visited one of several scenes of the ferocious battles that raged in the Hanko archipelago in...

Excavating and mapping the WW2 battlefields of the Hanko front

31.8.2020 Tuesday (day two). Today was a rather busy day that started with a lengthy web lecture associated with my doctoral studies....

Excavating the WW2 battlefields of the Hanko front

31.8.2020 Monday (day one). After introductionary lections at the Hanko Front Museum our small but efficient team of nine opened up a...

Busy battlefield archaeology week coming up!

On Monday 31st of August we will kick off the last leg of this years community archaeology digs on the Hanko front. First we will...

First documentation dive to the Junkers JU 88 A-5 crash site

On August 5th our dive team made the first documentation dives to the wrecksite of the German Junkers JU 88 A-5 off Hanko. Due to the...

Achtung Junkers

Next week (with the weather permitting) we will attempt the first scientific battlefield archaeology documentation dives to the German...

A WW1 British gas mask from the burnt down shelter!

The excavation nears it´s end and today we filed up excavation area I on the hillock of death. The second excavation area here with...

The burnt down shelter is full of items from WW2

Today we finally reached the find layer of the "Hamsterbo" shelter and lot´s of different finds from the last days and hours of the...

Deep down in the burnt down WW2 shelter

Hanko in WW2. The 2020 battlefield archaeology excavation. Day 6/10. Today we concentrated on the burnt down "Hamsterbo" shelter in order...

Schrapnel and timber constructions

During the last day of the first leg of xcavations we mainly concentrated on documentation. But we also encountered a couple more...

Burnt, uniform related finds!

Day four of the battlefield archaeology dig produced the first uniform related finds. Military insignia burnt and twisted by the extreme...

Burnt uniform details and exploded handgrenades

Today we continued the excavations of the burnt down "Hamsterbo" shelter. The finds confirm the story written down by "SS...

Were incendary bullets the cause of the fire that destroyed the shelter?

Today we started excavating "Hamsterbo" the frontline "home" of four Swedish volunteers on the Hanko front. This is what I think a...

We have found the shelter used by "Haupsturmführer" Åke Kretz in the autumn of 1941.

"Hamsterbo" was a small timber built shelter on the Finnish side of the frontline, only some 100 meters from the enemy. The cramped space...