Buoyed Waterways and Floating Seamarks – Cultural Heritage and Historic Infrastructure

It is widely known by historians that almost all heavier transports and distant communication in the early history as well as the middle-ages and even during 19th century industrialization were made possible through the opportunity of travelling over water. Both rivers, lakes and large seas were used for different purposes including travelling, fishing, trading, transporting cargo, missionize evangelism and so on. Among objects and environments that until recent time has been considered as maritime by the Swedish heritage sector are lighthouses, ships and boat vessels, fishing villages or pilot station the most common. Yet, with the exception of ships and vessels, all these environments are located on land. The routes between all these environments (and many others) is entirely overlooked. Therefore, it seems that the heritage sector doesn´t know how to handle aqeous infrastructure, or the remains that it has left, namely its floating seamarks and buoys. Although they have been continually changed and replaced, their ancestry dates back to the 16th century. Their importance to trading, travelling, fishing, agriculture, industry and therefore the developing of a well-fare nation is assumed to have been neglected by both historians and antiquarians. This problem will be discussed. The increased using of satellite navigation constitutes a possible risk to the maintenance of the floating seamarks. This can easily be understood when considering that each seamark costs big sums of money. How this problem could be solved is not supposed to be concluded, but the importance of illuminating the issue makes it relevant to conduct at least a brief discussion on the topic. The purpose of the study is to examine whether older sea routes can be traced in those used today by modern boat vessels. It is also to analyse if these sea routes contain opportunities (or limitations) to be regarded as heritage environments. What bearing the floating seamarks constitutes to the understanding of the sea routes or waterways will also be discussed. Through literature and archive documents such as seacharts from different periods and in lesser regard even personal communication, two case studies be examined. The first case study is a sea route between Kristinehamn and Vänersborg in the lake of Vänern. The other case study illuminates the route between Utlängan and Arholma along the Swedish south coast of the Baltic Sea.Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen med huvudområdet kulturvård med inriktning mot bebyggelseantikvarisk verksamhet 2017, 180 hp Grundnivå 2017: