Introduction

The submarine incidents in Swedish waters during the early 1980s had an enormous impact on the Swedish mentality and perception of threat. After a Soviet Whiskey submarine was stranded in the archipelago close to the Swedish naval base of Karlskrona in October 1981, a number of submarine intrusions took place deep inside the densely populated Swedish archipelagos. The government ‘found proof ’ of large, coordinated submarine operations along the Swedish coasts, and, after one of the most dramatic submarine hunts – in Hårsfjärden in the Stockholm archipelago in 1982 – the government protested strongly against the Soviet intrusions. The Parliamentary Submarine Defence Commission Report stated that six submarines (including three midgets) were believed to have ‘played their games’ among the islands of the Stockholm archipelago – four of them in the Hårsfjärden area, close to Sweden’s Naval Base East at Muskö. In addition, one submersible was observed in the waters of central Stockholm just a few hundred metres from the royal palace, and one midget submarine was able to crawl on the sea floor, as if the Soviets had been coming with ‘sub-surface tanks’ to attack Sweden from below.1