Seafaring Spirits : Dredging Up Answers to an Ancient Swedish Mystrey at Stockholm’s Vasa Museum

It looms unimaginably large in the semi-darkness of its personal Stockholm museum, a disturbing ghost ship unnervingly brought back from the dead.

But it is more than its surprising size--close to that of a football field--that has made the fabled Vasa Scandinavia’s most visited tourist site, attracting upwards of 10,000 visitors per day .

And it is more than its being the world’s oldest, definitively identified ship that has made it something of a national mania in Sweden--where King Carl XVI Gustaf himself opened the museum that encloses it in June of 1990 and the government issued two postage stamps marking the occasion.

Rather it is that everything in the Vasa’s life--from its launching to its loss to its recovery and the construction of its controversial, ultramodern $40 million home--has a touch of the poet about it. Nothing, but nothing about this ship and its museum has turned out anything like anybody expected.

Named after one of Sweden’s royal families, the Vasa was conceived and built in the first quarter of the 17th Century, a time when Sweden was the dominant power in northern Europe and aimed to keep things that way. Constructed over a three-year period, its hull alone taking the wood from a thousand specially grown oaks, it was intended by King Gustavus II Adolphus (who took a royal hand in its planning) to be the most daunting warship the Baltic had ever seen. Its length was 230 feet, its height to the top of its 10 sails nearly as great, and it carried 64 solid bronze cannon weighing a ton apiece.

Clearly, the Vasa was a wonder of the age, and, on the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1628, much of Stockholm turned out to witness its maiden voyage. But then, without warning, the inconceivable happened. The first strong wind of the day caused the ship to heel violently and, to the horror of those on shore, abruptly capsize. “Water gushed in through the gun ports,” reported a contemporary account, “until she slowly went to the bottom undersail, pennants and all.” Within little more than half an hour, after a voyage of less than a mile, the Vasa and some 50 members of her crew were no more.

But, as with the Challenger space shuttle disaster of more than three centuries later, the controversy lingered on. The king, away in Prussia fighting a war, was furious, and demanded an investigation. Since the shipbuilder had been dead a year, it was the captain who was arrested. “You can cut me in a thousand pieces if all the guns were not secured,” he insisted. “And before God Almighty I swear that no one on board was intoxicated.” At last, partly because the king had personally approved the Vasa’s design, no one was ever assigned responsibility for the disaster, and no one, not even the captain, was punished.

Except for the salvaging of some of its guns, the Vasa sat undisturbed in Stockholm’s harbor for more than 300 years, until a Swedish expert on nautical warfare named Anders Franzen took an interest in her. Franzen, who also specialized in salvaging wrecks, knew that the Baltic is the only sea in the world that doesn’t play host to shipworm, the tiny mite that destroys wood in saltier waters. So if the Vasa could be found, chances were that, unlike any other wreck of its vintage, it would be intact.

And in 1956, when Franzen discovered the Vasa lying in pitch darkness at 100 feet, that proved to be the case. But finding it intact after a full five years of searching was only a fraction of the job: Raising so sizable and so ancient a vessel had never been done before and was sure to be dauntingly expensive. A nationwide “Save the Vasa” campaign was begun, and eventually sufficient money and materials were donated by individuals, institutions, even the Royal Navy.

People were also generous with proposals on how the Vasa should be raised--including one plan to fill it to the brim with table tennis balls and let it float to the surface. Ultimately, more traditional salvage methods were chosen, but the work, which included replacing 8,600 rusted-out iron bolts with new ones and digging 60-foot-long tunnels under the hull in which to lay cables, was done in 16 stages and took another five years. To raise the ship, the cables running under the Vasa’s hull were attached to water-filled pontoons. The water was then pumped out of the pontoons, causing them to rise, stretch the cables and lift the ship. The Vasa didn’t see the light of day until April of 1961.

Work then proceeded simultaneously on three different levels. First, the contents of the ship had to be determined. Archeologists, prudently vaccinated against tetanus, typhoid and hepatitis, were sent on board, where they discovered some 24,000 items. Of those, 14,000 were considered part of the vessel itself, and the task of putting them back in place has been compared, not unreasonably, to doing the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle.

Second, once about 580 tons of water had been pumped out of the ever-so-waterlogged vessel, a method had to be found to keep the Vasa from first cracking up and then crumbling to dust. Eventually, it was determined to spray it with a mixture of water and polyethylene glycol (PEG), a substance more usually found in hand cream and lipstick. This was done in a temporary museum building in Stockholm harbor where, for 25 minutes, the solution was sprayed from 500 mouthpieces, then the ship was allowed to sit for 20 minutes, then sprayed again. And the Vasa would not just be hosed down for a day: It was sprayed with a fine mist 24 hours a day . . . for a full 17 years. And then the excess PEG which clung to it had to be heated off the vessel inch by inch by inch.

Finally, while all this spraying was being done in temporary quarters, a permanent museum had to be constructed. A site on the city island of Djurgarden in Stockholm’s harbor, a stone’s throw from where the ship originally went down, was chosen, and an all-Scandinavian competition was held, which attracted 384 entries. Two first prizes were awarded, one to a cooly elegant Danish entry, the second to a wacky dark-horse Swedish design, a multilevel, asymmetrical copper tent everyone simply called “the box.” After a reassessment by the Swedish National Board of Building and Planning, the box, which had barely missed being overlooked the first time around, got the final nod. In 1988 the Vasa was floated into its still incomplete new home, built on the site of an old dry dock, which made it easier to get the ship in. Then the ship was secured within the building, the water was pumped out of the space and the sheath-like museum was finished around it.

Because of the Vasa’s age and delicate condition--which demanded exactly controlled temperature and humidity--the new Vasa Museum had to be meticulously insulated. No direct sunlight was allowed in, and the few windows permitted near the top had to be specially coated and sealed against unfiltered sunlight. Because the Vasa was recovered without its masts, the museum was pleasingly designed with replacement metal masts sticking out of its roof, masts which are placed so that they exactly duplicate the size and location of the Vasa’s original wooden ones.

The museum is also very much designed with the visitor in mind. Since it could be described as a gallery with but one exhibit, enormous care has been taken to see that that exhibit is as accessible as possible. For though one enters the museum on the original water line, the Vasa turns out to be visible from seven different levels--from the bottom of its gorgeously carved prow to high above the deck.

And in fact the ship’s main characteristic is the way it is bedecked with a fearsome variety of supple, expressive wooden carvings--statues really. Over 500 figure sculptures and 200 ornaments originally attached to the hull were recovered and preserved, and they dominate the Vasa like a miniature carved army. Every gun port has a carved lion’s head on the inside of its cover, and both sides of the vessel are peopled with a hoard of cheerful cherubs, stern warriors and seductive mermaids. The idea, apparently, was to simultaneously strengthen the crew’s confidence and impress the enemy, and, if the Vasa could have managed to stay afloat, it would doubtless have been effective.

Equally effective is the way the museum has placed separate exhibits on each of those seven levels. And because each exhibit was curated by a different individual, what results is pleasing mixture of display styles not usually found under the same roof.

The main floor, for instance, features not only a 1-to-10 scale model of the ship but also a series of intricate displays showing exactly how it was raised as well as photographs of the very tough-looking Swedes who did the work.

Other levels feature a playful look at Swedish life in 1628, enormous and colorful paintings illustrating the ship’s history, a straightforward look at the three masters who did most of the Vasa’s carving, even a computer adventure that enables bold souls to build and sail the ship via computer simulation.

The most intriguing exhibit is called “Life on Board.” Since no one is allowed to actually board the Vasa, this section provides a replica of the aft section of the upper gundeck, complete with life-sized wooden figures to represent the poor souls who went down with the ship. This exhibit also houses some of the thousands of individual items that were salvaged along with the vessel. Here are visible the wooden bowls the crew ate from, the pewter used by officers, the large iron caldron where everything was cooked, even 20 of the original barrels where the food was stored. Most fascinating are an officer’s backgammon set, not that very different from ones available today, and a seamen’s chest, still neatly packed with his possessions--including his hat on top so it wouldn’t get crushed--when it was opened centuries later.

One final question, of course, needs to be answered: Why did the Vasa sink on that gusty August day? According to a museum slide show devoted to the question, the problem was that no one in Sweden had ever constructed a ship of that size before, so no one knew that the Vasa’s unprecedented double row of gun decks threw the vessel’s proportions all out of whack. To remain stable and stay afloat with all that heavy artillery, the Vasa would have needed more ballast, but the boat’s design, which the king had approved, did not leave enough room for the necessary stones. The result, as this state-of-the-art museum brilliantly testifies, was an accident waiting to happen.

GUIDEBOOK

Viewing the Vasa

Getting there: The Vasa Museum is located just below the Nordic Museum in the Galarvarv area of the island of Djurgarden in Stockholm harbor. Though accessible by bus, the easiest way to get there is via ferry. The trip costs about $1.40 and takes less than 10 minutes. Boats leave almost continuously from both Slussen, at the far end of Gamla Stan, and Nybroplan, near the American Express office and the major hotels, and dock an easy five-minute walk from the Vasa.

The Vasa Museum: The museum is open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., during the summer and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. the rest of the year, except for Wednesdays, when hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is about $4 for adults, about $2.40 for students and about $1.40 for ages 7-15. Children under 7 are free; local telephone 666-4800.

On the ground floor of the museum is an elegant little cafeteria serving sandwiches, salads and hot entrees, and a gift-shop bookstore where all manner of “Vasa-belia” can be purchased.

FOOD: Where to sample smorgasbords in and around Stockholm. L20