By Christer Nordin
Translated by Borgny Tingstedt
Nordic UFO Newsletter (Nordic UFO Groups, Bergen, Norway),
No. 1 – 1981
The Väddö (Swedish island in the Baltic Sea) UFO
incident
(Stig Ekberg and Harry Sjöberg were the witnesses) occurred
on 9
November 1958:
The UFO incident: The engine in Stig Ekberg’s car started to cough, then stopped. It was Harry Sjöberg who first sighted the
UFO. The object manoeuvred for a while before ‘landing’ on the road, 300
feet in front of the car. The unknown object (length 53
feet, height 20 or 23
feet) hovered over the road. The
self-luminous UFO (looked like fire underneath the object, lit up its
surroundings) looked like a flattened-out ball. After hovering over the road
for 10 minutes, the UFO left at high speed. While they checked the ‘landing’ site, Sjöberg found a piece
of heavy metal. Afterwards the car engine started
running as if nothing had happened.
Quote from the article:
“NO EXPLANATION TO THE PIECE OF METAL
After this event Stig (Ekberg) and Harry (Sjöberg) passed
the place several times and they came to talk about their strange experience. ‘We
told our friends about it, but they thought we were joking,’ Stig says. Almost
a year passed before Stig and Harry once again took interest in the piece of metal.
It was because they met a young man who was a metallurgist. However, he could
not tell what kind of material it was, but referred to a metal laboratory on
Drottninggatan in Stockholm. There Stig and Harry would get to know what kind
of strange piece of metal it was. But they failed the task and referred to
another lab in Regeringsgatan. No success there either, so Stig and Harry were
once more referred to another place. This time to a laboratory for metal analysis
in Helsingborg. There too the results were small, but they had managed to split
the piece of metal into three parts. According to information this should have been
accomplished by ultrasound.
After this the circus really began. The piece of metal
went from one excamination to another. Before the investigators got the pieces of
metal, they were sure they would solve the riddle. But as said before, everyone
failed.
CONTINUED EXAMINATIONS
Rumour now began to spread about their pieces of metal
and their experience. Stig came in contact with engineer Schalin in Linköping, to
whom he sent one of the pieces. The result from the examinations amazed Schalin
completely. The piece of metal has the hardness of sapphire and the specific
weight of 15.2. Sharp diamond discs just slides over its surface and it can
take several thousand degrees heat without getting the slightest red-hot. This
lead to the opinion that the piece was unique and Schalin asked for an appointment
with Stig. At this meeting Schalin was accompanied by an american air force
major who wanted one of the three pieces for further examinations in USA. This
was granted by Stig, who still has not heard anything from this air force major
or anything about the destiny of the piece of metal. One of the three pieces is
lost to the US air force. The two remaining pieces kept on puzzling its
neighbourhood for several years. In the early 70’s one of the remaining pieces finally arrived at Berkeley University in
California, insured for 50,000 sw. crowns. All this due to the american
magazine the National Enquirer, which had set a reward for anyone who could
present a real evidence for the existence of ‘flying saucers.’ At the Berkeley
University the examinations were made under guidance of prof. James Harder. It
took the scientists more than three years and thousands of dollars were spent
on the examinations. One could now establish the fact that the piece of metal
consisted of tungsten carbide, cobalt and few traces of titanium. But the
hardness and composition puzzles the investigators.
Further more they could establish the fact that it was
manufactured, it was sintered under enormous pressure. But by whom and in what
way, couldn’t be explained. ‘We doubted if machines for such pressure existed
except within diamond manufacturing,’ prof. Harder said in his statement. As
time went on the piece of metal returned to Sweden through among others the
State Department.
STRANGE BURGLARIES
‘When the event became public and was written about in
papers, a lot of strange things happened to me,’ Stig finally tells. An unknown
person phoned and offered 50,000 sw. crowns for the piece of metal and should
come and collect it within half an hour. Someone broke into Stig’s car and
looked through the compartment. This ‘someone’ appeared after police
investigations to be an american student in Uppsala. When he was to be
questioned, it was found that he had returned to USA very fast. Thereafter
someone broke into the boatyard where Stig worked. Even his home was hit, as
well as the homes of his close neighbours. ‘It even occured that letters or
parcels I sent by mail were opened and searched or never reached the address,’
Stig adds. One can ask himself why these mysterious burglaries and searchings
took place. Just souvenier hunters or maybe people with other interests? No
doubt the piece of metal was what they searched for. Anyway, the enigma of the Väddö
case and its pieces of metal is still not solved. This most interesting UFO
event that took place more than 20 years ago still puzzles and activates
ufologists both nationally and worldwide. The final word has not been added to
Stig’s and Harry’s widely discussed experience and there is all reason in the
world to get back to the unique Väddö case.”
Satellite photo of Väddö (island), Sweden (tageo.com)
(tageo.com photo)
Robert L. Hastings,
(gwu.edu photo)
