The Björksfall Saucer: Two Boys, a Domed Disc and a Smouldering Rock near Ulrika, 1944 or 1945

Two years before Kenneth Arnold gave the world the "flying saucer", a boy in rural Sweden may already have seen one. The story comes from a single source. A man in his 80s contacted the Swedish civilian group UFO-Sverige and described something he had seen as a boy of about 10. Investigator Johan Gustavsson wrote it up. He could not fix the date. It happened on a summer day, in either 1944 or 1945, worked out from the witness's school years. No certain date or year exists.

The place was Björksfall, a farm a little under three kilometres north of Ulrika, in Linköping Municipality, Östergötland. The boy was there with a friend. His father was elsewhere on the farm.

Then the object came. It passed about 30 to 40 metres from the boys, only 5 to 10 metres above the ground. It made a clear swishing sound. The witness said it resembled the classic disc with a dome on top. It was silver-coloured. The top was hexagonal, a dome fitted with glazing bars, like window panes. During his interview he estimated its size against reference objects. About 20 metres across.

It stood still in the air for a short time. Then it flew on a little way across the area. Over a slab of bare rock it hovered and sank until it nearly touched the ground. After about five minutes in all, it lifted to around 50 metres. It moved away over the forest. And it was gone.

The boys went up to the rock slab where the object had been. They found a burnt patch. It was smouldering and glowing. They tried to put it out before the father came back.

They were immediately accused of playing with matches. The father told his son never to talk to anyone about the whole thing. The boy did as he was told. He kept quiet for decades.

Gustavsson noted how few conventional explanations were available at the time. Sweden was neutral. No helicopter or similar craft was known nearby. The nearest comparable aircraft the witness could later find was a helicopter in Gothenburg.

He was also candid about the limits. The account was given decades after the fact. The witness has since seen media coverage of similar craft, which could have shaped his memory. Nobody sampled, photographed or recorded the burn mark, and the event cannot be verified. No government body ever looked at the case. Still, Gustavsson concluded that what remains is "a very fascinating story from a witness who is, in my eyes, fully credible."

The case has a tiny footprint. Beyond the UFO-Sverige article, it lives on as an entry in Wikipedia's list of Swedish sightings, which files it under 1944. Yet it sits at a striking point on the Swedish timeline. In 1946 the ghost rockets swept the country, with around 2,000 reports logged. That same year Gösta Carlsson told his own landing story at Ängelholm. The boy at Björksfall, if his memory holds, saw his silver disc before either. And before Arnold.