Vasa Museum ~ Stockholm, Sweden ⋆ Lifeguin

Waddling around the Vasa Museum

The Vasa Museum is located in Stockholm, Sweden, and is marvelous. You can find it on the island of Djurgården. You will see inside an almost fully intact 17th-century ship when you enter. And it’s not an ordinary ship. It’s one of a kind, and nowhere else can you see such a ship in such a state. We waddled around and learned much about the museum’s history and future.

If you want to know whether to visit the museum read on.

Is the Vasa Museum worth it?

To keep it short – yes, absolutely! You might think you will see just one colossal ship in the middle, but there is much more to discover and see.

The overall museum is also interactive, and you get to know the whole story, from building it to the sinking and how they got the ship out of the water. There is a lot to try out and learn—even the plans for the upcoming years are on display.

Vasa Museum Tickets

The Vasa Museum doesn’t currently offer an option to buy tickets online. You have to buy them on-site at the pay desk at the entrance. Or get your online ticket here.

Preferred payment is by card.

Adults: 170 SEK (April – October) and 190 SEK (May – September)
Children under 18 years old: free entry
Penguins: free entry

An adult must accompany children 12 years and under at all times during their visit.

Check their official websites to ensure the prices are the same – link.

As with other museums in Scandinavia, you have lockers available for smaller bags. Please do not bring large bags to the museum as there is nowhere to store them.
You can download audio guides in several languages to a smartphone or tablet in advance or on-site.

Vasa Museum Opening Hours

The Vasa Museum lies on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm. The address is Galärvarvsvägen 14. You can get there by tram, bus, and ferry. If you come by car note, there are limited parking spaces available near the museum.

The opening hours vary depending on the season.

Daily from 8.30 am to 6 pm in June – August.
Daily from 10 am to 7 pm (Wednesdays until 20:00) in September – May.

When it’s closed, exceptions include the 24th and 25th of December and the 31st of December.

Check out their official site to ensure the opening hours didn’t change – link.

What is Vasa Museum famous for

The Vasa is the best-preserved seventeenth-century ship in the world and a unique art treasure. More than 98 percent of the ship is original and decorated with hundreds of carved sculptures.

What you can expect to see in Vasa Museum

Apart from the ship itself, nine exhibitions around the ship enrich your experience. You will find everything here – from the shipyard where the Vasa was built, life on board, the search for Vasa, the salvage, the excavation, and how the museum came to be.

Vasa Ship

Vasa is the world’s best-preserved 17th-century ship, and it is enormous. It is hard to take a picture of the whole ship. It was a surprise for us as well to see how big it is.

The Vasa is roughly sixty-nine meters long and is ornately detailed with hundreds of wooden carved sculptures, making it a notably enormous artistic treasure.
The Vasa sank in the middle of Stockholm in 1628, and it took 3000 years to salvage it.
Today, more than ninety-five percent of the warship is original and restored to its original glory.
The three masts atop the sizable ship were recreated from the Vasa’s original likeness and demonstrated the ship’s awe-inspiring height.

Miniature of the Vasa Ship

The miniature of the ship is stunning. It is in full color, and the ship’s details are unique. It gives a good picture of the Vasa’s appearance in all its glory before it sunk on the maiden voyage.

The model depicts the ship as it was when newly built with all ten sails set. It is 6.93 m long and 4.75 m high. The hull is made of Japanese oak, and the ropes are made of flax and hemp. The Vasa’s approximately 5oo sculptures and carved ornaments are all reproduced at the correct scale on the model.

The model was built by the Maritime Museum between 1985 and 1990 but remained unpainted, waiting for the results of a research project on the painting of the Vasa that began in 1990.

Other Exhibitions

Research shows that there were women around Vasa. Class and marital status were often more important than gender in earlier periods. Men indeed had more formal power, but 17th-century society depended heavily on the work and presence of women.

People’s place in the hierarchy was determined primarily by their family but also by the land they owned and their marital status and gender.

We liked the depiction of the sinking. Vasa sank on the 10th of August 1628 in Stockholm harbor during her maiden voyage.

Over time people forgot the location, and in the 1920s, a group of divers applied for permission to blow up the wreck and salvage the black oak timbers. During the 1950s, a private researcher, Anders Franzén, began to search for her.

We also recommend sitting down at the cinema which shows a 20-minute short film about the Vasa. It is fascinating.

The museum has three floors you can explore, and each holds something else. There are stairs you can take up but no worries also an elevator is available.

Apart from having an opportunity to go three stories up and try to take a picture of the whole Vasa, you can also waddle all the way down and go around the ship.

It was in 1957 when Navy divers began their work. The Vasa stood on an even keel, sunken in mud and clay up to the lower gun deck. They drove six tunnels under the hull. The Vasa’s weight is about 700 tons, including its ballast of stone, clay, and sludge. By the summer of 1959, the tunnels were completed, and two 6-inch steel cables passed through each tunnel.

On 20 August 1959, the Neptun Salvage Company lifted the Vasa.

Steel cables were connected to the pontoons, Oden and Frigg. Alongside were two salvage vessels, Sleipner and Atlas, the tender, Sprängaren, and the Navy diving boat, Belos. By alternately filling and emptying the pontoons of water, the Vasa was slowly lifted out of the clay in one piece.

In 16 stages, she was moved to shallower water until she lay at a depth of 15 meters near Kastellholmen.

Do not hesitate and visit the Vasa Museum. Worth it. If you have to choose one museum only, then this is it.

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