Vasa Museum, Stockholm

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We arrived at the Vasa Museum to find quite a long queue! It didn't take that long, and soon we were paying our admission fee and entering the Museum.

It was a wow moment when we first saw the Ship, amazing! We just stood and looked, and then started doing our own tour of the museum.
My 1st photo is what you see on entry, the Bow of the Ship and all the old carving's along either side.

Then we walked around the back and had a look at the stern which has an amazing number of carving's of more people, quite spectacular, so much work had gone into this Ship!
Where-ever we looked, there were carvings!

It was easy to imagine how magnificent this Ship would have looked when it set sail on August 10th, 1628, on its maiden Voyage, and how devasted they must have felt when seeing it sail approx 1.5 kms, heel over and sink in the middle of Stockholm harbour.
It's believed about 40 men, women and children died in this catastrophe.

It is not expected the Vasa will not survive for ever, so if you are interested, I would make sure I go now before it is too late!

It is an excellent Museum!

ADMISSION IN 2012.....
Adults 110 SEK ....Students 80 SEK (with valid student ID showing expiry date)
Children and adolescents 0-18 years free of charge

OPEN....
1 June - 31 August DAILY 8.30 - 6pm
1 September - 31 May DAILY 10.00-5PM
Wednesdays 10.00- 8PM
Closed: 1 January and 23-25 December

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Just don't expect to see the Vasa Ship and that is all in this Museum, there is much more than just that!
There are many other exhibition's including how they are trying to save the Vasa.

These exhibition's tell the story of the Vasa from start to finish and are very interesting!

I really enjoyed viewing the Vasa sculptures. As they were underwater for so long, those on the hull of the Ship are a stained dark brown colour today

Research shows they were coloured.
After twelve years of examination, hundreds of microscopic fragments of colour have been analysed and interpreted and approx 50 key pieces of sculpture have been restored to show how they were originally painted.

In the 17th century, ship decoration reached its greatest height.
Sweden was sparsely populated and unknown, and for Gustav II Adolf with his ambitions for a great empire, it was important to show that we were as mighty as other countries. The Vasa’s sculptures would demonstrate a powerful nation with strong political and military resources

The website listed below tells a lot more.

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What a good idea at the Museum, is the painted moded of the Vasa done in a scale of 1:10.
Now we know what the actual Ship looked like in all its glory!

It took four model builders 12,000 hours to build. No wonder on the real ship, I thought there were an awful lot of sculpture's, in total, when the Ship was in one piece, there were over 500 sculptures.

To begin with, the only parts painted were the canon-gun openings with their lion masks and the Vasa coat of arms, but after research, it has been painted in the original colour scheme, which has allowed a more precise interpretation of how the Vasa may have looked as she left port.

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Although I am not that much interested in museums, I visited the famous Vasa Museum and I was very impressed. It is probably Scanadinavia's most visited museum.

It houses the preserved warship Vasa that sank in 1628 and was risen in 1961. The museum has a kind of mysterious atmosphere as the wooden ship needs low light and moist conditions for maintainance. On various floors the museum has many interesting exhibitions including films and a slide show.

Directions:
The Vasa Museum is situated on the western end of the Djurgarden island.

Website: http://www.vasamuseet.se/

To be honest, I had to get my ear pulled to visit the Vasa Museum (Vasamuseet). I mean, how interesting can the history of a ship that sank less than a nautical mile into its maiden voyage possibly be?

To find out, take the excellent guided tour of the museum. There is obvious humour to be had with the Vasa's short period of service, and the guides don't shy away from it. They also offer very interesting insight into the recovery and conservation of the ship. Basically, the Vasa is an ongoing experiment in conservation techniques -- no one knows for sure how long it will continue to exist, despite all the steps taken to ensure its longevity.

The Vasa Museum is said to be the most visited museum in Scandinavia, and now that I have been there, I can understand why. The only similar display in the world is the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England.

The Vasa Museum is open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (8 p.m. on Wednesdays). Admission is SEK 110 for adults and free for children under 18 (and holders of the Stockholm Card).

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The Vasa warship sank in 1628 less than half a kilometre from its launch due to bad design: keel not deep enough, not enough room for sufficient ballast. It was salvaged in 1961 and its shipyard was turned into the Vasa Museum, a huge building that holds the Vasa itself, many artifacts found in and around the wreck, and several educational exhibits.

All the exhibits are also in English, so it makes a good few hours for the family to visit. There are several other sites to visit on Djurgården Island making the trip out there worthwhile.

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The museum is centered around the Vasa, a warship that capsized on her maiden voyage in 1628. Seems the king wanted another cannon deck and it made the ship unstable. Salvaged in 1961 from the harbor, the Vasa has been painstakingly restored. Enter the climate controlled museum and walk around the ship on multiple levels to get a close up view of the ship. It is dark inside, so photos are hard to take, but it is still a great ship museum.

This museum is about the ship, Vasa, which was built in 1626, launched in 1628 but sank in 1628 after only just travelling out of the Stockholm Harbour. The ship had important links as King Gustav II Adolf commissioned Henrik Hybertsson and his brother Arendt de Groot to build Vasa. The ship was salvaged in 1961, 300 years later. The museum offers interactive displays about the ship including a film.

I visited the museum in August 2003 during my weekend break in Stockholm. My Stockholm Card includes Vasa Museum but you can find out on the museum's website for further information including prices.