Shropshire Star

Old school chums travel thousands of miles to uncover the mystery of the toasting fork... in Shrewsbury

A group of school friends from a group of islands in the middle of the Baltic Sea are spending the weekend in Shrewsbury to try and uncover the mystery of a brass toasting fork.

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Robert Vickström with the fork in 2007

The 10 men from the Aland Islands are flying into the UK from across Europe as well as their home islands for a reunion.

They chose Shrewsbury in the hope of finding out more about the fork which was bought in an antiques shop in their homelands 26 years ago.

The top of the fork.

Anton Nilsson one of the 10 said: "We're a group of friends from the Åland Islands. It's an autonomous, demilitarised, Swedish-speaking part of Finland with 30,000 inhabitants located in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

"In 2007, as teenagers we bought this "fork" at a local shop that traded in antiques and other random items. We had this habit of giving each other more or less bizarre gifts and this was one of them.

"We don't know anything about it, except that it has Shrewsbury written on it next to three lions

"We've been friends since growing up on these islands but today we live in different places. So we're flying in from Åland, Stockholm, Helsinki, Geneva and Brussels. We'd indeed be very happy if there's anyone who could provide more information regarding this fork."

Anyone who can help with information about the fork can contact Anton by emailing anton.j.nilsson@gmail.com.