Archipelago ferry rescues sauna group drifting on ice floe outside Stavsnäs, Waxholmsbolaget vessel M/S Gällnö picks up five people and their gear, leisure on sea ice becomes a public transport diversion

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aftonbladet.se

Fem personer och en bastu drev omkring på isflak. Foto: Privat Privat

aftonbladet.se

Five people and a portable sauna ended up drifting on a small ice floe outside Stavsnäs winter harbour on Sunday evening, and were picked up by the archipelago ferry M/S Gällnö. According to Aftonbladet, the crew took four passengers aboard first, then returned for a fifth who stayed behind to gather equipment, including a kayak.

The episode is small in scale—no injuries, no dramatic weather—but it shows how quickly leisure turns into a public logistics problem once it moves onto thin ice. The group’s setup was not a casual stroll: a sauna requires transport, fuel, and planning, and it signals a deliberate decision to treat the sea ice as usable terrain. Yet the moment the ice starts to drift, the margin disappears and the question becomes who has the capacity to intervene.

In this case, the capacity was already on the route map. Waxholmsbolaget’s ferries are there to move commuters and residents, but they are also large, staffed vessels with cranes, radios and trained crews—mobile infrastructure that can be repurposed in minutes. The decision to assist was made on the spot when the ferry “saw that five people were on a smaller ice floe” and asked whether they needed help, the Stockholm regional transport authority’s press office told Aftonbladet.

That dual use is not an accident. Sweden’s archipelago is built around subsidised, centrally planned transport links that keep services running even when passenger demand is seasonal and thin. It also means that risk-taking on the ice is not priced like it would be if rescue capacity had to be contracted privately, billed directly, or rationed by availability. When the nearest large vessel is a public ferry, the cost of miscalculation is quietly socialised into an operating budget.

The details matter because they show how close to routine this is. No emergency call is described; the ferry simply diverted. No clear explanation is given for how the group ended up on open water; a bystander who photographed the scene said he did not know “where they came from or how they ended up out there.” The uncertainty is precisely the point: once people are visibly at risk, the institutional response cannot wait for an after-action report.

M/S Gällnö lifted four people aboard, turned back for the fifth, and put everyone ashore—leaving the question of why a sauna was floating off Stavsnäs to be answered later, if at all.