Vasa Museum Stockholm – About The Pride Of The Nation... That Sank

From a distance the building at the island of Djurgården is a pretty strange sight: a massive construction with three masts sticking out of the roof.

There can be quite a queue at the entrance, but once you’re inside you won’t bother having waited for a while. You are quickly overwhelmed by the equally massive warship, the only (more or less) intact 17th Century ship around and the biggest preserved object in the world. This is a truly remarkable place!

The video below gives you an idea of what you will see. In reality everything looks brighter and more colorful, but still, it’s a really good video.

The Vasa has a total length of 69 metres and a width of 11.7 metres. The main mast measures 19 metres from keel to the top. With 64 guns on board it was built for battle.

The ship was ordered by the Swedish king Gustav Adolph, who was building a Swedish empire around the Baltic Sea in the early 17th Century.

On August 10, 1628 the mighty warship began its maiden trip. Only a few minutes later the ship began to heel over and sank, only 100 metres from the southern tip of Djurgården. There were 150 seamen on board of which 30-50 died.

The precise reason why the ship sank is something that is still discussed. It was mainly due to insufficient knowledge about shipbuilding in that time.

The Ship Was Salvaged In 1961

A man named Anders Franzén located the ship in 1956, 30 metres beneath the surface. Salvaging the ship took a long time of preparation but on April 24 1961, the ship broke the surface - 333 years after it sank.

Surprisingly the ship was intact. Even the 500 sculptures and 200 ornaments that were used to decorate the warship, were wonderfully preserved on the sea bottom. You can now see them all in the Vasa Museum.

There’s a cinema in the Vasa Museum that should not be missed. You can see a 25-minute film showing you the interior of the ship, background information about the disaster and the salvaging. You will also learn how it is conserved. Screenings are in several languages and subtitled.

The Vasa Museum in Stockholm is open daily from 8.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Just outside you will find two more ships you can visit during the summer: the icebreaker Sankt Erik, built in 1915, and the lightship Finngrundet from 1903.