Today was a gorgeous day in Stockholm and the perfect day to go sightseeing! Our first stop was the Nordiska Museet and the Vasa Museet.
The Vasa Museum (Swedish: Vasamuseet) is a maritime museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Located on the island of Djurgården, the museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia.
The ship sank after sailing about 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on August 10th 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor.
The ship was built at the order of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). It was constructed in Stockholm at the navy yard under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. It was richly decorated as a symbol of the king’s ambitions for Sweden and himself, and upon completion was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. Vasa was dangerously unstable however, due to too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability she was ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after encountering a first wind stronger than a breeze.
