Swedish girl's message in a bottle answered after 22 years

A bottle containing a note thrown into the Baltic Sea by a child in the 1980s was recently found by a woman on the east coast of Sweden who was surprised to realise she knew the sender.

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“I almost don’t believe it’s true," 31-year-old Josefin Grund and the author of the note told the local Härnösands Allehanda daily.

Grund's surprise comes after Annica Winhagen, who had been out sailing with her husband near Bönhamn on the northeast coast of Sweden, spotted a bottle while strolling the beach.

Curious, Winhagen cracked open the bottle.

The ink on the rolled up piece of paper inside was still clear, revealing a short note scribbled in a child's hand.

“Hi the one who finds the message in the bottle send a letter I like post cards solums hamn Josefin Grund,” the note read.

Winhagen's amazement grew after she realised she knew who the sender was.

“It wasn’t just that is was so old that was exciting, but that I actually knew the person who had sent it,” Winhagen told The Local.

“I had worked with her mother when she was just a little girl.”

Since Winhagen recognised the quite uncommon last name, as well as the name of the town, Solumshamn, located about 30 kilometres away from her own home, she contacted her former colleague with a picture of the message.

The woman then sent the image to her daughter, now living in Stockholm.

“I thought about it for a while, and then I remembered sending the message. I was eight, about to turn nine,” Grund, now 31-years-old, told Härnösands Allehanda.

The bottle was one of several she remembers throwing in the chilly waters off Sweden's northeastern coast as a young girl, leading her to wonder if she may yet receive more answers.

"It would be fun if more turned up," she told the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

Grund also plans to have her own daughter send a message in a bottle.

"She's just the right age," she told the newspaper.

Winhagen remains mystified by the whole experience.

“There were several peculiar coincidences that day. At this same spot, twenty years ago, someone I knew got in contact with me - and the same person just happened to contact me again that very day twenty years later.”

“I almost started believing in some sort of destiny,” she told The Local.