JJ's on Tour - Sweden 2025, The Vasa Museum, Part One.

 

Carolyn and I have been off again on a little adventure to another very interesting part of the world, and somewhere new to both of us, Sweden and specifically Stockholm with some further exploring out towards Uppsala via the nearby town of Sigtuna.

Our flight earlier this month saw us taking a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines one hour flight from Exeter to Schiphol in the Netherlands and another KLM two hour flight connection on to Stockholm. 

With the 1st of November 'hoving' into view and Carolyn celebrating a significant birthday we decided to mark the occasion by spending it and a few days either side enjoying the delights of the Swedish capital and with a year gone since our adventure to Iceland in 2024 reviving our acquaintance with some more Nordic history in a country where a great deal of that history originates.

JJ's Wargames - Iceland 2024

With just four days to get to know a bit more about Sweden, Carolyn pulled together our agenda which would see us with time to enjoy the sights of the city, together with a bit of fine dining, as well as some key historical visits such as the Royal Palace, Historic harbour front, a boat trip around some of the many islands around Stockholm that are sites for many summer holiday residences for Stockholmers, as well as the Viking and Vasa exhibitions and a tour out to Uppsala to explore some of the early Viking settlements that arose in that area.

Our waterfront view from the hotel looking towards the small island, left of picture, home to the Parliament House, and to the right, the large building that is Stockholm City Hall.

We decided to base ourselves close to the city centre as I intended not to do any driving while I was away and we both prefer to walk when the opportunity arises and the map below illustrates the proximity from our very nice hotel, the Radison Blu Waterfront, to some of the key historical sites around the harbour area including the Parliament House, the Royal Palace and Vasa Museum, and we decided to pay extra and have a waterfront view from the hotel seen above looking towards the small island, home to the Parliament House, and Stockholm City Hall to the right of the picture.

Stockholm is a city of islands, situated as it is on the Baltic Sea.

The journey to our hotel from the airport was about a forty minute taxi drive, followed by dinner and an early night in preparation for the next day wandering around the city and getting our bearings as to where everything was in relation to the hotel and walking along the harbour front out to the Vasa and Viking Museums and Exhibitions, whilst admiring the city architecture, not ravaged by the twentieth century World Wars that destroyed much of the historic architecture in the rest of northern Europe.

Our walk around town managed to incorporate the old Sweden with a bit of the more recent Swedish culture.

The ornate bridge leading to the Royal Djurgarden National Park and the Vasa Museum.

Perhaps surprisingly it was not the Abba Museum that I was thrilled to see!

Eventually the building I was most interested to see came into site as we crossed the bridge leading to the Royal Djurgarden National Park, a rather large island and former Royal hunting park, now home to several museums and exhibitions, and no it was not the Abba Museum that I was thrilled to see, but rather the purpose built building that houses the astonishingly complete seventeenth century warship, the Vasa, built between 1626 and 1627 which sank on her maiden voyage in Stockholm harbour on the 10th August 1628.

This large building is the purpose built home to the Vasa, a warship I had been very much looking forward to seeing.

The Vasa was built on the orders of the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629), another military theatre in the wider conflict known as the Thirty Years War, and was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. 

Gustav II Adolf of Sweden (1594-1632)
Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632) was the son of King Karl IX and Kristina of Holstein-Gottorp. His grandfather was Gustav I, or Gustav Vasa as he is often called today, the first of the Vasa dynasty. Gustav Adolf and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg were the parents of Queen Kristina, the last of the Vasa dynasty to sit on the Swedish throne.

The Thirty Years' War was fought from 1618 to 1648, and was fought primarily in Germany, but several other countries became involved in the conflict, including France, Spain, and Sweden. In fact, almost all of the powerful countries in Europe were involved in the war, which began as a fight about religion between Protestants and Catholics, but as the war continued, the Catholic Habsburg dynasty and other countries used the war to try to get more power; that would see for example, Catholic France fighting for the Protestants, which made the French-Habsburg rivalry even worse.

Map of Europe in 1648. The grey places are small German states within the Holy Roman Empire.
The two historically political and military rivals Sweden and Denmark wanted to control the German states in the north next to the Baltic Sea.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_map_1648.PNG

Possibly one of the best military leaders of all time, 'The Lion of the North', Gustav led Sweden to be a military power during the Thirty Years' War and spent most of his reign fighting. Napoleon Bonaparte, held Gustavus Adolphus in high esteem, and considered him one of history's greatest generals, advising his officers to study Gustavus's campaigns to learn the art of war, and he himself meditating at Gustavus's monument on the Battle of Lützen battlefield.

In June 1630 Gustav landed in Germany, starting the Swedish fight in the Thirty Year's War on the Anti-Imperial Protestant side, which was losing at the time, but with Sweden's help the matters soon changed in favour of the Protestant faction, however Gustavus would be killed in 1632 at the Battle of Lützen while leading a cavalry attack.

Richly decorated as a symbol of the king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion the Vasa with her 64-guns which included forty-eight 24-pounders, was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world.

This exquisite model of the Skeppsgarden Stockholm Naval Shipyard as it might have looked during the construction of the Vasa recreates the scene of her launch as depicted in the route of her short maiden voyage depicted below.

The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago; whilst at the same time the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to openly discuss the ship's problems or to have the maiden voyage postponed. 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voyage_of_the_Vasa_2.svg

The Vasa was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull caused by her heavy bronze cannon and her heavily carved upper hull, this despite 120 tons of stone ballast stowed to help lower the centre of gravity.

At the inquiry into her sinking, ordered by a furious Gustavus Adolphus, the captain supervising the construction of Vasa, Söfring Hansson, recalled how he invited Vice Admiral Klas Fleming down to the ship, moored at the royal palace, because he was worried. He had thirty men run back and forth across the deck causing the ship to roll alarmingly. The Admiral had the demonstration stopped, afraid the ship would sink at the quay, and under pressure from the king to get the ship to sea, he ordered Söfring to sail anyway.

The Sinking of the Vasa - Andrew Howat.

The Vasa sank in about twenty minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze, and the inquiry, organized by the Swedish Privy Council was practically obliged to find no one responsible for the disaster for fear of embarrassing the king who had signed off on the construction and design plans submitted by Dutch-born Master Shipbuilder, Henrik Hybertsson, and who died in 1627; leaving the supervision to his assistant Hein Jakobsson, whose defence was that he was simply following the king's orders to complete the build, and that and he had proposed widening the ship by some forty centimetres due to his concern with the original design submitted to the king in Hybertsson's original plans.

The day after our visit to the Vasa Museum we went on a boat trip around the wider harbour area and I photographed the Vasa Museum situated on the Djurgarden from the water, very close to where the warship sank as depicted above.

After 333 years on the seabed, the mighty ship was salvaged in 1961 by Anders Franzén and his team of salvage experts, and today is the best-preserved 17th century ship, magnificently adorned with hundreds of carved sculptures and 98% original hull.

The first thing that met my eye on entrance to the exhibition hall, which was I have to say gloriously uncrowded, not by any means a usual situation, was the mighty bow or beakhead and bowsprit of the Vasa which immediately confirmed my impression about how well this ship is preserved.

The Vasa is so well preserved because it sank in cold, dark, and almost oxygen-free, low-salinity water in Stockholm harbour, which prevented the wood-eating bacteria and shipworms that normally destroy wooden wrecks. The sheltered harbour also protected the ship from the storms and currents of the open sea, leaving the hull largely intact for 333 years.

The preservation treatment involving her treatment with special wood preserving chemicals took almost 20 years to complete.

 

Protecting the shape of the ship are 27 cradles under the keel and other parts of the bottom of the ship designed to stop the hull from falling apart.

The first landing allows the visitor to observe the lower gun deck ports as well as the carvings and rigging detail on the bow together with the first quarter gallery views at the stern, and as well as getting intriguing glimpses of the interior of the lower deck one is reminded that the gunports on the opposite broadside, only just about three feet above the waterline, were the ones through which water poured as a gust of wind made the Vasa heel to port, rapidly flooding the ship.

Many of the lower deck gunports are still adorned with the Swedish lion head.

The underside of the quarter gallery depicts Roman soldiers on guard, with the warriors carrying swords, shields, lances and bows. King Gustavus Adolphus was a great admirer of the Roman Empire, the model of a great power which the king was keen to present Sweden as.

The painted reproductions of these carvings on display give a much better impression of how they would have looked back in 1628.

After twelve years of paint research, some thirty of the Vasa's 500 sculptures have been analysed, and fifteen of them are shown in this display, with the brown areas on the sculptures representing parts where no paint was recovered and it was from the study of these sculptures that the underlying principles of the ship's colour scheme were understood.

The Vasa Coat-of-Arms with the Vasa family corn sheaf, confirming the king's dominating position and emphasising that he was designated by God. The small cherubs supporting the escutcheon indicate that Sweden had the Vasa kings to thank for their divine peace and freedom, with their hands grasping olive branches - the symbol of peace.

The museum houses many sculptures from the ship, some of which remain unknown as to where they were positioned, but the one seen at the top of the picture below has been identified as a cabin door lintel.

Walking further along this landing at the lower gun deck level the visitor gets the first impression of the glory that is the stern gallery and upper transom of the Vasa with the Vasa Coat of Arms above serried rows of chaser gun ports and vividly bringing to the imagination the towering impact seeing the ship from say a boat coming alongside.

That said one also comes away with a clearer understanding why this ship would have been so unstable, with her narrow lines below water immediately obvious with none of the classic bilge bulge one would expect to see on a ship of these dimensions with the towering stern only emphasising that narrowness expressed in the inquiry into her sinking.

Continuing around the ship one comes level with the lower port side gun tier, through which water flooded on day of her sinking.

Across the hall from where I was taking my pictures of the stern gallery I noticed the 1/10th scale model of the Vasa, fully rigged and under sail as she might have looked on the day of her sinking, and so on working my way around to that side of exhibition I got some close ups of this stunning model.

The 1/10th scale model of the Vasa, fully rigged and under sail.

I really enjoy taking in the detail on a well made model, an aspect of our hobby that allows a deep appreciation of the model makers art, and this example brought to life the look of the Vasa in a way that only a really good model can do, and I found myself referencing back to it when looking at the ship as she appears today.

The lion headed gunports wonderfully reimagined on this model close to the port-side of those very same gunports on the Vasa behind, and I loved the attention to detail with the iron bolts on the hull individually recreated.

Likewise looking along the port strakes of this model reimagines the real ship close by.

Crew members at the heads, some probably not appreciating the unusual rolling sensation. 

On the lower tier I could also get a splendid top-down view of the Vasa's long boat, equally well preserved as the mother ship and added to the list to check out on my descent to that area of the exhibition. 

The Vasa's stunningly well preserved long boat.

Close by on this level was a very interesting exhibition covering the discovery of the wreck site in 1956 and the later recovery and preservation of the ship once raised, bringing to life the extraordinary work needed to bring a project like this to the marvellous conclusion one is treated to today.

Franzén's notes and charts together with the lead core sampler shown screwed into a length of ships timber.

By 1953, Anders Franzén knew that the Vasa ought to lie somewhere in the Stockholm harbour, and he designed a lead with a core sampler to collect materials from the seabed, marking on a chart all areas where the depth was approximately 30 metres, about 98 feet.
 

A schematic showing the position of the Vasamuseet (Vasa Museum) in relation to the position of the wreck site above a selection of scattered debris to be found on the seabed indicating the likely position of the main wreck site.

There are two samples of timber seen in the picture below, the lower section from a frame on the Vasa and the upper section from the Danish ship Sophia lost off Gothenburg in 1645, the latter badly damaged by shipworm, and illustrative of how well preserved the Vasa timbers were, protected in Stockholm harbour by the brackish waters characteristic of the Swedish coastal regions of the Baltic.

In the summer of 1956, Franzén  began to search the seabed south of Beckholmen, carefully avoiding a curious mound shown on his charts that allegedly indicated an area of dumped stone rubble blasted from the construction site of the Gustav V dry dock, a site that might have caused the loss of valuable grapnels and leads.

With plans to dump more stone in the area the pressure was on to find and confirm the wreck site, and by chance on August 26th 1956, evidence came to light that the stone supposedly dumped where this mound was recorded had in fact been dumped elsewhere; and so Swedish Navy diver Per Edvin Falting went down to investigate following a large piece of black oak being recovered by the sampler.

Falting found a large hulk, partly sunken in the mud of the seabed, and felt cannon ports on two decks, the Vasa was found.

Salvaging the Vasa required fully equipped hard-hat divers in equipment weighing nearly 100 kilos, 220 pounds, consisting of a one-piece suit of thick canvass with a middle layer of rubber and having watertight rubber cuffs at the wrists, complete with screw on helmet and sealed breastplate.

The divers had to work at a depth of nearly 40 metres, 130 feet at temperatures of 4 degrees C/ 40 degrees F, doing shifts of about one hour, with staged resurfacing to avoid decompression sickness, and with one diver going down as another came up to keep up the pace of the recovery work.

By 1961, the Vasa had been made watertight, and the pontoons Odin and Frigg were in place using hydraulic jacks to slowly raise the ship, and at 09.03 on the morning of the 24th April the Vasa broke surface, bringing back memories for me of watching a similar exercise on the 11th of October 1982 when the Mary Rose was brought up off Portsmouth, resurfacing after more than 400 years underwater.

 Of course once the ship was raised then a new stage began in recovering artifacts and indeed remains of the crew inside as well as a follow up dive mission to recover items still on the seabed around the wreck site.

 

The preservation of the Vasa ship involved two primary methods: spraying it with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to replace water in the waterlogged wood, and using hydrogen reduction for the iron objects to remove rust and then sealing them in wax. Initially, the ship was kept constantly wet by spraying it with water after salvage to prevent it from drying out too quickly. 

Ongoing preservation includes structural support, replacement of rusty bolts with corrosion-resistant steel, and continued research into new techniques to monitor and prevent degradation.

Finding our way up to the next landing we were treated to a splendid view of the upper deck and closeups of yet more exquisite elaborate carvings.

Another picture below of the 1/10th scale model helps to remind the viewer what this warship would have looked like in her prime on the day of sailing.

The high transom pictured below and above provided space for a riot of colour and form, with the sculptures delivering a message that the ship belonged to Gustav II Adolf and that he was the rightful king of Sweden.

 

Each sculpture proclaims the king's power, majesty and glory, whilst also showing that God was on the side of Sweden.

The sculptures were as important as the guns for the warship, and whilst not everyone would understand the symbolism in the classical figures, most would have recognised the royal coat of arms, knights and the Swedish national coat of arms, as well as cherubs and heroes of the Bible.

It's somewhat ironic that this mighty transom, with all the weight of the added sculptures, together with her powerful broadside of 24-pounder guns were very much instrumental in the Vasa's sinking in making her so top heavy and raising her centre of gravity that even 120 tons of stone ballast stowed in her bilges couldn't compensate for.

 

Working our way around to the upper tier of the stern gallery you can get very close to the remarkable decorations seen below depicting six knights guarding the Royal House of Vasa Coat of Arms as seen in the reproduction above.

The picture below recreates one of the knights, thought probably to represent the king's ancestors and showing that Gustav's lineage was old and impressive.

 

A reproduction of one of the knights seen
above guarding the Vasa coat of arms. 

Below the row of knights and off to the extreme right can be seen the carving of Hercules as explained in the description below, again with a modern replica illustrating the original paint work.

 

Hercules the great hero of antiquity.

Above the row of knights and immediately below the Swedish national coat of arms can be seen a row of grotesque's, a series of grimacing masks, whose exaggerated expressions entertained people in the 17th century and it seems had no deep symbolic meaning.

 

A row of grotesque's immediately below the Swedish national coat of arms, with a close up of one of them below together with a modern replica recreating the colours from the paint remains discovered on the originals. 

A modern replica of one of the grotesques seen above.

Finally King David can be seen below the Vasa coat of arms as illustrated below and in the picture above, again with a beautifully created reproduction to give a more vivid impression of how this sculpture would have looked.

Amid the carvings, open gallery window frames, now missing their glass panels offer tantalizing glimpses of the interior cabin and stairs to upper decks showing how amazingly well preserved the interior of the ship is, matching that of the exterior.

Working around the transom to draw level with the starboard side quarter gallery, one is treated to yet more exquisite detail in the liberal use of carvings of sea creatures, Nereides and Tritons entwined with fish tail rests on the roof of the gallery.

Renaissance artists took many motifs from Greek mythology, with here representing the Nereides or sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanid Doris, together with the Tritons, the sons of Triton, the son of the sea god Poseidon and Amphitrite. He is often depicted as a merman with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish.

These sculptures were part of the display on the lower tier gallery of reimagined replicas using the colour of paint discovered on the originals above.

This beautiful decorative art is extended to the upper bulwarks as they step down from the poop deck on the transom with the sea god Proteus ready to guide the ship.

Proteus was an early prophetic sea god, often called the "Old Man of the Sea," and was known for his ability to change his shape to avoid giving prophecies.

He was known to transform himself into a seal, and was a help to lost sailors in finding their way home, again beautifully reimagined in the replica sculpture below.

Proteus transforming himself into a seal.

The mizzenmast was originally about 131 feet tall, and consisted of two sections and a flagstaff.

The mast carried the triangular mizzen sail, which made it easier to steer the ship.

The lower part of the mizzenmast has been reconstructed, as evidenced by its lighter colour compared to the other 98% of original timber which has the darker colour after 333 years on the sea bed.

One final glance back towards the quarter gallery reveals a perfectly positioned musket port, in the forwardmost turret decorated with a wreath.

There is just enough room behind for a soldier with a musket, and a man posted here could shoot at smaller boats attempting to close with the ship and avoid the main guns.

Supporting the masts are a series of ropes known as the shrouds and stays, with a cross section of ropes known as ratlines that enabled the crew, tasked with working the rigging and sails on a particular mast, to easily access the top most section, acting like a rope ladder.

These powerful ropes, with the heaviest ones leading forward known as fore stays and those backwards back stays, brace the masts with the latter leading to the ships side and are attached to channels, which appear by their colour to be original, which together helped to transfer the energy of the wind to the hull.

These reconstructed shrouds can be seen close up attached to what appear to be
original channels, the wooden board jutting out at a right angle to the hull.

The mainmast carried the ship's largest sails and was originally 171 feet tall, made of three overlapping sections, with a flagstaff at the top with, as seen here, only the lowest section surviving.

In order to construct a mast this large, it was necessary to build it from several timbers, a natural commodity Sweden is blessed with in abundance, held together with rope and iron bands.

An amazing survivor of the sinking, the original lower section of the mainmast.
Note the mighty fore stay leading from the top of this section of mast, as mentioned 
in the description of ship rigging above.

Amidships one is able to get a good view of what looks like a reconstructed upper deck around some original grills, on what would have been the spar deck, an area of the ship that provided ventilation below decks and where the long boat and smaller boats would normally have been stacked and easily accessible for rigging to a rope run from the masts to raise and lower over the sides.

Further forward along the main deck as you approach the forecastle the perfectly preserved capstan can be seen, which with the strength of 24 men made it possible to lift the anchors, sails and other heavy gear.

To help with setting the sails, thick pillars were arranged on deck, called knights or knightheads.

They have sculpted heads and rigging lines could be tied off around their necks.

Knightheads can be seen between the shrouds and used for tying off rigging lines.

The forecastle area on a 17th century sail ship is where you would expect to find the foremast, which in the case of the Vasa would have stood 151 feet high, composed of three sections and with a flagstaff atop.

Only the lowest section has survived, made of a single thick pine trunk, with this mast and the foresail it carried important for manoeuvring the ship when raising the anchor and performing a tack by bringing the ship through the wind to sail on the opposite tack.

The lower section of the foremast is well seen in this picture together with the addition of a restored fore rail, not original judging by its lighter colour but cleverly carved to fit the decoration of the original timbers.

The beakhead is the farthest forward part of the ship, and like the stern galleries and transom was heavily decorated with colourfully painted sculptures.

Of these the lion figurehead was the most important, gilded, it showed the Vasa was one of the king's most powerful ships. As well as the figure head there are also sculptures of Roman emperors, role models for many European monarchs including Gustav II Adolf.

Just aft of the cathead, the three pronged projection, one on each side of the bow and used to hoist in and lash the fore anchors, can be seen the depiction of a Roman warrior standing, shield up in a defensive posture, on a lions head with a dog at his feet.

The lion allows the disrespectful and irritating dog to live indicating King Gustav's magnanimity, as the defender of Sweden, being merciful to his defeated enemies as the lion is to the dog.

Of course contempt for the enemy has been a common theme throughout the history of warfare, and in this case where better to depict the Polish enemy that at the heads where the Vasa's crew would see him as they sat on the toilet, trapped and humiliated under the cathead.

The beakhead also provided a working platform for seamen responsible for setting sails on the bowsprit and foremast, as well serving the traditional role in most navies as the crew's main toilet area, or 'heads' to use Royal Navy slang, with two toilets positioned here where the waves could wash them clean.

The lines controlling the two sails set on the bowsprit were belayed (tied off) on wooden pins in railings called pinrails, with the pins serving the function of a quick and secure way of controlling a line under a heavy load, but occasionally as a useful cudgel if fighting became close and personal.

Pinrails at the centre section of the beakhead were used for tying off the sails deployed on the bowsprit.

In the picture below, the box like structure of one of the two toilets can be seen with their flush directly out over the sea below, however these two toilets were simply not enough for a crew of 450 men and so the traditional option of hanging out over the sides to do ones business was an inevitable recourse.

As mentioned Greek and Roman antiquity were much admired in the 16th and 17th centuries and King Gustav II had the beakhead of the Vasa decorated with twenty Roman emperors, one of which is identified as Titus, son of the founder of the Flavian dynasty, Emperor Vespasian, and victor in the First Jewish War which saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the Great Temple in 70 AD.

Emperor Titus as he might have appeared on the beakhead of the Vasa.

The bowsprit was a dangerous place to work, with two smaller sails that could be set on it, one of them on a short mast, stepped at the outer end on a round platform.

Use principally to aid steering the ship rather than to increase speed, it was a tricky walk out along the length of the bowsprit to reach the mast at the end.

The muscular Royal Lion can be seen at the head of the beakhead lunging forward with the Vasa dynasty coat of arms in its paws.

The gilded lion was a symbol of courage, strength and royal power and the sheaf of wheat seen on the shield is called a 'vase' in Swedish and is where the ship's name 'Vasa' comes from.

This walk around the recovered Vasa completes the first part of my look at this remarkable 17th century time capsule, and marks another tick on the bucket list that was a 'must see' item established by the young sweet summer child that was JJ back in the day, just getting familiar with this ship after seeing the Airfix kit, with Airfix being a formative influence on my early love and interest in military, naval and air force history.

In the second part to this post, I intend to focus on the finds from this time capsule, with the many items recovered pointing a light on how the people, men and women, lived on this ship and in the case of some of the remains discovered, how they died.

During our visit I found myself casting a memory back to visits to Portsmouth and in particular our visit to the Royal Dockyard Museum in 2016 and the Mary Rose exhibition the following year, and of course my visit to the HMS Trincomalee in Hartlepool back in 2022, so if old historical warships are your thing you might find those posts interesting, with links below.

JJ's Wargames - Portsmouth 2017 & the Mary Rose Exhibition
JJ's Wargames - Portsmouth Historic Dockyard 2016
JJ's Wargames - HMS Trincomalee, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Hartlepool

In the meantime I'm off to Yeovilton and the Fleet Air Arm Museum this weekend for a second visit this year in as many months, this time with friends including those from the Devon Wargames Group, where I will be hosting the Battle of Cape Finisterre, Ferrol or more commonly 'Calder's Action', fought on the 22nd July 1805, alongside several other games being hosted and which I will aim to report back on here on JJ's.

As always more anon.

JJ