Dalkarlsberg north-west of Örebro in central Sweden was completely empty of people on Wednesday morning, save for the military bomb squad called in to disarm the weapon.
Nobody know how it ended up in the garden of a Swedish house, but it has been there for 86 years, reports Nerikes Allehanda.
Authorities were first alerted to its existence in May, when the new owners of the house called the police.
Before the controlled explosion, the military built protective trenches around the shell, placed a concrete block on top of it, and covered it with 900 tonnes of sand, just to be on the safe side.
“We don't think it's active. But as long as there's as much as a risk of one percent, we don't want it here,” the owner of the property, Göran Lidman, told Nerikes Allehanda.
The shell before the explosion. Photo: Polisen
But after the bomb squad successfully blasted the projectile, they were able to establish that it had indeed been loaded with active explosives.
“It contained about 20 to 30 kilo of explosives. The shell split apart in the explosion, but we have not seen a fuse. I could be there somewhere, but there's nothing in the shell anyway, so we consider it to be harmless,” the head of the team in charge of the operation told the TT newswire.
Sand on top of the grenade. Photo: Polisen
Around 85 houses were evacuated in Dalkarlsberg for the controlled explosion on Wednesday and a helicopter flew across the village to make sure no people remained outside in the area.
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