About the Vasa Museum (2024)

FAQs

What is special about Vasa Museum? ›

The Vasa Museum is one of Scandinavia's most visited museums. It is here that you will find in all its glory, the unique and well preserved warship Vasa from 1628, embellished with hundreds of wooden sculptures.

Most of the dead were trapped inside the ship. We only know the names of a few people on board, mostly those who survived the catastrophe. The captain, Söfring Hansson, abandoned Vasa late, almost too late, as he was dragged under by the sinking ship and only barely reached the surface in his heavy, sodden clothes.

The Vasa did not even make it one mile. A strong gust of wind caused the 226-foot-long ship to keel over as water poured in through its open gun ports, which were on display for its maiden voyage. About 150 people were believed to be on board when it sank; about 30 died.

Vasa was a very expensive ship and was one of the largest in the world. She had hundreds of sculptures, and they were painted in many colors. She was a symbol of how powerful Sweden wanted to look and how good the Swedish king was.

The Vasa is the best-preserved seventeenth-century ship in the world and a unique art treasure. More than 98 percent of the ship is original, and it is decorated with hundreds of carved sculptures.

Today Vasa is the world's best-preserved 17th century ship, and the most visited museum in Scandinavia.

When the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa was raised from the Baltic Sea more than 60 years ago, the 30 human skeletons found with the shipwreck were assumed to be those of its male crew.

The skeletal remains of at least 17 and perhaps as many as 19 people were found during the excavation of Vasa. Most of these are men from the crew, but there are also women and a child. In studies of the bones, we are able to determine their height, age, diet, and medical history.

The sheaf of grain was the heraldic symbol of the Swedish royal family at the time of king Gustav II Adolf (reign: 1611–1632). His grandfather was the famous king Gustav Vasa and his daughter later became Queen Christina. The word vasa (or vase) means ”sheaf of grain”, although in old Swedish.

Exactly 333 years later, it was pulled up to the surface of the harbor. After the water and mud were pumped out, and the gun portals sealed, the Vasa ship floated. Today, it stands in a separate museum of its own—Vasa Museum.

Was the sister ship of Vasa found? ›

Vasa sank, but her sister ship Äpplet (The Apple) sailed for several years. Maritime archaeologists from the Museum of Wrecks recently discovered the wreck of the warship Äpplet outside Vaxholm. Äpplet was launched in 1629 and was built by the same shipbuilder as the Vasa ship.

Water poured in through the gun portals and the ship sank with a loss of 53 lives. The Vasa lay in shallow waters of Stockholm harbor (at 32 meters depth) and after initial attempts to salvage it failed, was largely forgotten until it was located by Anders Franzen in 1956 [1].

The main reason why Vasa is so well kept is the fact that the ship sank whole and in brackish water. (Brackish water is a mix of salt and sweet water.) Brackish water does not have shipworm, which would otherwise have cause great damage to the wood. Shipworm eats wood that is in the water.

The Vasa was a large Swedish warship commissioned by King Gustavus Adolphus in 1625. The ship was built during the Thirty Year War and was needed to defend and protect Swedish territory in the region of the Baltic Sea.

In the “King's Currency” the Vasa cost more than 200,000 Rex Dollars to build, a little over 5% of Sweden's GNP. One twentieth of the nation's annual economic product now lay at the bottom of the Stockholm harbor.

It's jaw-dropping, to put it mildly, and the accompanying exhibits and documentary film are excellent. The Vasa Museum is one of Sweden's most visited tourist venues. Go early Access from central city is easy via the surface train that runs along the waterfront or the ferry from Slussen.

In general, visitors stay at the Vasa Museum for one and a half to two hours. The film about Vasa is about 20 minutes long, and if you want to join a guided tour, it takes about 30 minutes.