Stockholm in Winter - Visit to Vasa Museum at Djurgården island

19 January 2017  

It made sense to combine a visit to the Vasa Museum with a visit to the Abba Museum since both museums are within walking distance to each other on the Djurgården island.

Vasa is a story of an epic fail that happened in 1628 and an epic success 333 years later. Vasa is actually a name of a Swedish warship, supposedly the most powerful warship in the Baltic, that sank on her maiden voyage before the eyes of a large audience, scant minutes after setting sail for the first time.

There would be no Vasa Museum if that was the end of the story. 

In the early 1950s, Anders Franzén, a fuel engineer in the Swedish navy and amateur archaeologist with a great interest in Swedish naval history, started searching for the Vasa. The ship was found a few years later, upright and half buried in mud, near where Grona Lund is.  It was a miracle that the ship had not rotted away or eaten by sea worms.  The mud had a preserving effect, and the wood-destroying sea worm does not thrive in water with low salt content.

The next challenge after the discovery was how to salvage the ship. Six tunnels were dug through the mud, under the ship, for the salvage team to pull massive steel cables across. These cables were taken to two floating pontoons and the ship was then lifted, inch by inch. On 24 April 1961, the epic success happened and the ship saw the light of day again, 333 years later.

There was still much remained to be done. Holes and leaks were plugged and water pumped put till she is afloat on her own keel and could be tugged to a wharf. Then the restoration work began. I remember I visited the Vasa Museum at the temporary exhibit, 30 years ago. It was good to be back.

There were free guided tours at the Museum and the schedules were posted near the entrance. We started the tour on the ground floor and followed the guide as she took us round the ship. The guide in the tour did a good job to explain details about Vasa. After the tour, we had time to go round to see the details of the ship and learn more about the Vasa, how and why the ship sunk, how it was found, recovered, restored, preserved and how the crew had lived and died. There was also some display of remains of the crew that was recovered.

Starting point of the tour – the bow of the Vasa.

This ship took 1000 oaks trees to build. This was a big ship compared to the normal Viking boats that requires 12 trees. The ship was designed by a Dutch guy called Henrik as the King wanted a super powerful boat with 2 rows of guns mounted on a double deck. 

In total, there was 64 number of 24-pounder guns. Due to the excessive number of guns, the ship was actually top-heavy and it was also found that there was not enough ballast at the bottom.

To add to the issues, the workmen and builders of the ship comprises Swedes, Finns and Dutch. There were communication issues. One example was that the Dutch and Finns were using different scales. The Dutch foot was shorter by 1 cm compared to the Swedish foot. There were also no drawing plans. All these led to bad construction. To make matters worse, the designer (Henrik) passed away one year before completion. Actually, that saved him from having his head chopped by the King after the ship sank!

All the design issues led to the pre-matured sinking. Before she could even get out of Stockholm harbour, a strong gust of wind tipped the ship so far over on its port side that water poured in through the open gun ports on the lower gun deck. Within minutes, the ship was on the sea bed at a depth of 32 metres. All but 30 of the crew and guests (family members of crew) survived when Vasa sank.



The figurehead is a lion holding the heraldic arms of the Vasa dynasty, a corn sheaf (“vase”), after which the ship was named.


The sculptures along the sides of the beakhead represent the Roman emperors, in chronological order.  Some were still missing.


Gun ports with hatch opened. The design is such that the brightly painted lion  mask would be upright when the hatch is opened.

Even the gun ports of the ship was also decorated. They would usually remained closed until the ship is about to go into battle. When closed, the lion head inside the ship would be upside down!
It was believed that when Vasa sank, all the gun ports were opened due to celebratory cannon fire.


Beautiful rigging and mast.

The “toilet” for the crew is located at the head of the ship. It can be seen in the photo above. Guess where it is.


The back of the Vasa.

The preserved ship was mostly dark due to the preservatives used. A project image shows what the actual colour scheme may be like.


A model of what the actual ship could look like in full colours.


Overall, I enjoyed my visit to the Vasa Museum.  I spent almost 2 hours at this museum and may have spent even more time if not for the 5 PM closing time.