Vasa Museet

It rained Tuesday (yesterday) so it was perfect to spend the mid-afternoon exploring the Vasa Museum. The Vasa ship left Stockholm on its maiden voyage on August 10, 1628. It was a royal event where everyone came to watch the war ship take to the sea. The ship was going to sail to Danzig, Poland and it was supposed to create some kind of a bottleneck in their harbor so that their battle ships could not get out. The ship sounded like it was a sight-to-be-seen at the time (even if it was today it would have been quite a spectacle.) It was built with 5% of the Swedish budget -- an absolutely amazing amount of money even by today's standard. (For context, today about 1% of the budget in Sweden is for defense and back then 5% was spent solely on this ship. Yes, Lauren, I am writing a report, so shhh I need these details :-) The picture on right and below are from a model built on a 1:10 scale but it gives you an idea of how ornate the details were on the ship. Can you seriously imagine seeing it in real life? Ridiculous.

The ship took off and within minutes a gust of wind blew and spectators could see the sails of the ship tilt to one side. What a disaster! Everyone is town is here watching the ship set sail and all of a sudden it starts to tilt over?? It hasn't even really gotten out of the harbor yet.

The Vasa was one of the first ships of its time to have two floors of canons. For effect they were set off. With the ship tilted to the side, water started pouring into the gun holes and the ship began its fateful journey to the bottom of the sea. It immediately sank and would sit there for the next 300 years until 1961. When you hear the story like this, it is hard to understand why they couldn't "find" the Vasa ship for so long to bring it out of the water. Stephan likened it to "losing a toy in the bathtub" ... how exactly does that work? :) Our tourguide clearly missed a few critical details, but the main point was that after 333 years under the sea, in 1961, the wreck was salvaged. It has been reconstructed with 95% of the original ship remaining. The amount of money going into rebuilding it too is insane. The museum that Stephan remembered as quite "boring" as a child was actually quite interesting for us all. Even he admitted how sick it was. "The Vasa is such an important and fascinating part of our history, and I am just so glad that the Olson sisters were able to experience it while they were visiting," he said. Hahhahahaha just kidding. I made that crap up. He isn't even paying attention to me. But he is cooking Swedish meatballs for dinner. mmmm.

Check out how tall and thin the stern of the ship is and all of those crazy looking figures built into it. For those curious (Dad), it sank because it didn't have enough ballast since they were counting on the weight of the 400 soldiers and their supplies (mainly beer it sounded like) that they would pick up 2-3 days into the journey.

Sorry if that part was boring for you avid followers (ha!) but the museum wouldn't make sense if you didn't know the story. The museum is a huge tourist attraction in Stockholm and I could see why.

After that we went to another lovely cafe (seriously are they all amazing?) that Mona used to go as a teenager and had lunch. Here's some spontaneous footage from lunch...