Nobel 2014 7: You Say "Disaster", I Say "Opportunity"

Day 2: The Vasa Museum – Tuesday December 9, 2014

This is a “free day” for those of us in the entourage.  We have an official event tonight, but the daytime is open for us to be tourists, so that’s what we do.  Following the normal exquisite buffet breakfast, we are going to spend the late morning and early afternoon at The Vasa Museum.

No, we're not cold.  Not at all.  It was about 10 degrees F and we Californians aren't quite used to that.  The hats were all courtesy of Eileen's sister, who knitted them all as presents!

The Vasa Museum showcases….wait for it….the Vasa.  The Vasa was a warship built in 1628 by the Swedes, and it was intended to be THE expression of national power at a time when the Swedish Navy was pre-eminent in Northern Europe.  Yes, really.  They had a navy, and it kicked ass during most of the 17th century.

The Vasa had it all: specially-cast bronze cannons that made it one of the most heavily-armed ships in the world, ornate scrollwork and decorations designed to awe the world with Sweden’s glory, and full backing of the King.  Actually, it had the full meddling of the King, who kept ordering alterations (mostly to the armaments) that robbed the ship of something really important: stability.

The result?

On the day the ship was launched and as it was making the short 1400 yard trip from the drydock to the wet dock it turned over and sank.  Yep, couldn’t even make it a mile before it went down.  And YOU worry about getting that first scratch in the days and weeks after you get a new car?

The investigations that followed have a remarkably modern slant to them.  It was painfully obvious to everyone that the changes demanded by the king were objected to by the architect (who had the good sense to die almost immediately after the sinking) – so the architect couldn’t be blamed.  It also sounds like the Fleet Admiral raised warnings – but was too cowed by the Royal Presence that he failed to flat out refuse to let the ship sail.  So the Fleet Admiral couldn’t be blamed.  And, of course, NO ONE was going to blame the king.  So, in the end, no one was held accountable for this HUGE NATIONAL DISASTER  AND EMBARRASSMENT.

Fast forward 400 years, and someone discovers the dead ship in the bottom of the harbor, where it has been buried in so much silt that little to no oxygen is available.  What this means is that almost nothing has actually decayed.  In fact, over 90% of the original ship (along with the remains of the 15 people who died) are still in almost-mint condition.  In an unprecedented archaeological feat, the ship is salvaged and reassembled, and a special climate controlled building is built to house it: The Vasa Museum.

So that’s the background to our visit to the museum, which was about a 1 mile walk from our hotel on a brisk, cold morning.  The museum was an incredible experience!  The displays of recovered items are really well laid out and signposted, and there’s also a lot of material about the recovery and preservation processes that is really interesting.  The reassembled ship, of course, dominates the museum, and visitors can walk around the outside of it on multiple levels of the surrounding building.  From a tourist point of view this is definitely a Must See attraction for anyone visiting Stockholm.

Freezing outside, but tremendously climate-controlled inside.  The Vasa is one of the (and might be THE) largest preserved item in the world, and the building is filled with incredible technology to ensure that the absolute perfect conditions prevail.

Amusingly enough, while the museum doesn’t cover up the history of how the Vasa was built and ultimately sunk, they certainly don’t follow the “this was a national embarrassment” thread of the narrative.  Instead, the emphasis is on “aren’t we lucky that the Vasa was fortunate enough to sink in such a way as to preserve it for future generations?”

Even here, as tourists, there’s still a Nobel angle.  Back on the day that we checked into our hotel, one of the things we’d each received at the Nobel Desk along with everything else was a laminated “Key of Honour” card which provided us with free admission to a bunch of local museums and other attractions.  So we simply flashed our cards at the ticket desk and were given free admission to see the Vasa.

Our magic card, giving us free entry to about 30 different places during the period of the 2014 events (December 5-13).  Another item in our goodie bag, courtesy of the Nobel Committee.

Post-Vasa we made the chilly walk back to the hotel and then headed over to the Kungstradgarden (which actually has a lot of dots over various letters, but I’m too lazy to find out how to insert them).  This is a 3-4 block long park area just bordering the opera house.  We spent a few minutes watching families skating at the outdoor ice rink before going into Burger Bar Café (at the far end of the park) for lunch.  This was a funky, cozy little space and gave our young boys food that we knew would mesh with their palettes.

 From there we meandered back to the hotel (only about 2/10ths of a mile away, so easy) and relaxed a bit before getting dressed for our next “official” event.

What happens next?  Tune into the next episode by selecting another page from the "2014 Nobel" menu, above.  These instructions cheerfully supplied as a public service for those who haven't won a Nobel Prize.