Beckholmen

This guide to Beckholmen in Stockholm's harbor traces the island's centuries as a pitch-boiling site, where sailors fed wood fires to protect wooden hulls from an unseen threat no microscope of the era could explain. You'll hear how Queen Christina set the island apart in 1647 for the smoky, dangerous work, and how a fire in 1723 nearly destroyed the very operation meant to keep ships safe. It also follows a modern discovery inside the steamer Norrtelje, where restorers found tools left behind by shipwrights working in the 1890s.