The editorial introduces X-Ray Mag’s Sweden-themed issue, highlighting Scandinavian diving, Baltic wrecks and the region’s distinctive underwater heritage.
The theme of this issue is something that we have wanted to do for a very long time.
While the team behind X-RAY MAG is truly international, spanning several continents from Catherine GS Lim in the East, who faithfully and solidly takes care of our business out of Singapore, to Barb Roy in Canada, the tech-diving grandma of British Columbia, and all our other wonderful editors in the times zones in between, our founding editor-in-chief, Peter Symes, is a native Copenhagener of British-Scandinavian heritage.
Once upon a time, “in another century”, Peter and his Scandinavian colleagues, Arnold Weisz and Millis Keegan, were editors of the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish print dive magazines, before pooling their expertise and experience and putting it behind the publication you are now reading.
Over the years, X-RAY MAG has covered exotic locales—such as Tasmania, Lake Baikal and Patagonia—gone to the Southern Ocean and Bikini Atoll, joined scientific expeditions and gorged on coral havens in South East Asia—such as Raja Ampat—and explored the rugged beauty of Iceland, British Columbia, Russia and Norway, just to mention a few. Most of our many travel reports are now available on our website.
While our headquarters are still based in Copenhagen, we think the time has come to invite you inside our very own backyard and the waters upon whose beaches our dear Scandinavian editors played as kids and where they took their first nervous breaths through a regulator.
With this issue, which features Sweden (Denmark and Norway will be featured at another time), we want to put the spotlight on some of the unique diving that the Scandinavian peninsula has to offer.
Scandinavia has some awesome underwater treasures, which have not quite yet received the international recognition they deserve—in particular, the amazing historic wrecks from centuries past, many of which are still stunning and in pristine condition.
While some of the diving can be demanding at times, and a sunny holiday cannot be guaranteed, few places on the planet can beat the still pristine beauty and easy access to wilderness above and below the surface that Scandinavia has to offer.
This is especially true around midsummer, when the white nights cast almost everlasting sunsets and romantic evenings on the beach, when one can grill seafood on a camp fire and go diving around the clock without needing a lamp.
While most Scandinavians are habitual dive travellers yearning to see as much of the world as possible, none of them have a desire to leave home during these pleasant summer months.
This issue sets out to explain why.
— Værsågod! (Bon appetit)
