Day 27: Stockholm❤️ Part 1 🌞

Yet Another Lovely City!

Having survived our first night in our cabin, which was equipped with bunkbeds and a ladder that didn’t quite fit, we were up reasonably early for breakfast. We enjoyed a really good breakfast and visited with a Swedish woman who now lives in Texas. She is here visiting family and will travel from here to SJPdP (where finished walking this year) to set off across the Camino Frances. We loaded her up with a little advice before setting off on foot to see this amazing city.

It really is a beautiful and colourful city. It’s perfect for taking in on foot, and we were fortunate enough to have sunny days which meant that the colours popped and the walking was very pleasant.

Stockholm is built on a series of islands at the foot of an archipelago. This means that you’re walking across lots of little bridges as you follow the coastline.

Our first planned stop was the Vasa Museum. My friend Ariel had told me that this was a must see in Stockholm. I’d been looking forward to it for quite a while. It’s an amazing story from beginning to end.

The longish short version 😂 is that in the 17thC King Gustaf II contracted for a magnificent flagship to be built. The design and construction was managed by a couple of Dutch ship designers. They had a large crew conscripted to build the ship. It was going to be the largest ship in a very strong Swedish fleet. There were two gun decks with 144 cannons, a three masted ship of the line. The hull was 60cm thick to help prevent cannon balls from piercing the hull.

At that time Sweden was a very wealthy country and a well known in German carver was contracted to make approximately 400 intricate carvings which were each painted and became part of the ship.

To huge fanfare, on August 10, 1628 the Vasa was launched and prepared to take its maiden voyage. It managed to sail about 100 m before a strong gust of wind caused it to sink at the bow in just five minutes, killing about 50 of the 250+ people on board. The ship went down in 30 m of water, and efforts at that time to salvage the ship were unsuccessful.

Jump ahead to the 1950’s and 60’s when the ship was again located. Using the more modern technologies that were available in the 1960’s, the Vasa’s hull was successfully refloated 333 years after it sank! Massive chains run under the hull through the mud were used for the salvage.

Once it was put into dry dock the ships timbers had to be kept wet with large hoses for a number of years to prevent the hull from rotting. The ship was then sprayed for months with polyethylene glycol (used in lipstick) which replace the water in the wood, thus preserving and stabilizing the timbers.

Then began the reconstruction of the ship including the decks, cabins, basically everything. All the parts were there, but because all the metal fasteners had rusted/rotted this meant that the archeologists had a massive puzzle to piece back together. The ship was reconstructed using exactly the same timbers that were painstakingly placed into their original positions. What an incredible puzzle that must have been. The ship has been reconstructed using 98% of the original parts.

During the reconstruction it was determined that the ship sank because it was poorly designed. Too narrow in the bow, inadequate ballast in the hold and the stern was top heavy.

There’s a whole lot more to the story, but suffice it to say that the ship has been rebuild and housed in this quite lovely museum.

The presentation was quite clear that the ship will not last forever, however, there is a detailed plan which will continue the preservation process for many years to come. Over 3 km of line was used to replace all the rigging. all the wood blocks and tackle were in mint condition, and preserved in the mud just like everything else.

This is 1:5 scale, model of what the Vasa looked like when it was built. Note the colours.

From there we walked to another museum. AM was looking forward to this! I went along for the music😅

All the albums were there including the many awards for their successes. Silver, Gold and Platinum records adorned the walls. I know my sister Kathy was quite a fan.

Getting a bit hungry we walked to the food hall. Really nice, really expensive!

We walked past the Royal Palace, apparently one of the better ones in Europe.

I’m going to post another edition (Part 2) later today after a hoped for sunset.

Geoff😎