Saxophone Detector

Just a note about yesterday’s metal detecting at the Baggensstäket battlefield. We worked for less than four hours, but I got lucky and ran into the burnt remains of wooden fortifications on a seaward slope. Loads of nails and spikes in one place, and thanks to the fire, some were in pristine shape. Beautiful smithwork: octagonal cross-sections, square heads with bevelled edges — all clearly taken from army stores (or the royal shipwharfs in town?) when news of the Russian approach arrived. Also charcoal and fire-cracked stone. I’d like to see an excavation there.

Bo Knarrström had modded his White detector with a smaller antenna coil and programmed it for hyper-sensitivity. Also, he wore no head phones. As a result, wherever he went he gave off sounds like a really tortured, unstructured, pilled-up free-jazz saxophone solo. I had brought my C-scope, and it served me well, though my headphones didn’t work and the others said I sounded like an irate wasp.

The fieldwork at Baggensstäket is part of research performed by the Battlefield Team at the National Heritage Board of Sweden.