Visit to the Vasa Museum

The Vasa Museum is amazing. Absolutely astonishing what an imposing ship Vasa must have been, and for those 15 minutes she got to sail on her maiden voyage, she made us Swedes proud! Not to mention what an incredible feat to get her up from the bottom of the ocean in the 60’s and then preserve and restore the whole ship after 333 years!

I was 8 or 9 years old last time I visited the Vasa Museum and back then, the restoration was still not finished and the Vasa did not have any masts yet. But coming back 20 years later, it was almost a bit surreal as I can remember walking in to that main museum hall where Vasa is sitting in a dock, I can remember watching that same video presentation about the Vasa and the restoration project and I can remember having seen some of the surrounding exhibitions before; however my perception of the whole experience was (understandably) very different. I guess I am just older and wiser… probably mostly older.

Wikipedia:

Vasa (or Wasa) was a Swedish warship that was built from 1626 to 1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing less than a nautical mile (ca 2 km) into its maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. It fell into obscurity after most of its valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century. After it was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor, it was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. It was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Wharf") till 1987 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961.[2] Vasa has since its recovery become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish "great power period". It is today also a de facto standard in the media and among Swedes for evaluating the historical importance of shipwrecks.