8th May 1984 Stockholm Wanderings and the Wasa Museum

Tuesday 8^th May I woke up Early but he wouldn’t get up so a while later I finally arose. I could see we were passing through a lot of islands, many with houses on them. I hadn’t realized that the archipelago was so immense or that there was one at all. We were following the red Viking Line ship. For breakfast I had an unusual meat pie and some yoghurt.

   We docked in Stockholm at nine and had a short free bus ride to the Ropsten Metro station, where I caught the train to Hornstull Station, which is near the Zinken Youth Hostel. I lugged my luggage up the hill and down the stairs to the hostel, a group of huts, which were all full. The girl at the reception counter rang up and told me to go to Hanverkshuset Youth Hostel on Skeppsholmen Island (where the famous boat-hostel ‘af Chapman’ is [and still is]. To get there I caught the Metro to Slussen and a 46 bus to the bus depot.

   I got out near the Grand Hotel and took a taxi from there to the hotel for 15 crowns (it costs ten to get in). It was a very long drive – no, it wasn’t; I didn’t want to carry that far the cases, I was getting so worn. I paid 38 crowns for the night, went to the room. Then I went out, back to Zinken to pick up my membership card which I had left there. Then I had spaghetti bolognaise at an Italian pizza place down the road.

   So, on the metro to T-Centralen (T = Tunnelbana = metro), which is near Central Railway Station and within walking distance of Skeppsholmen. I wandered about the area for a while, to Sergels Torg, a large glass tower sculpture surrounded by a pool near the Kulturhuset – went inside this, an exhibition of wooden and cardboard sculptures, and you can make your own if your wish, but I caught the bus to the Wasa Museum instead. The museum is opposite the other side of Skeppsholmen. [Sergels Torg is actually the name of the square, the most central one in Stockholm. The sculpture is called Crystal.]

   The WASA, [or Vasa], as everybody knows, was built on the orders of King Gustav II Adolf [Gustavus Adolphus] for Sweden’s involvement in a Thirty Years’ War, but sank on her maiden voyage on 10^th August 1628. Three-hundred and thirty-three years later what happens is she is discovered and raised and the long period of preservation and restoration begins, with eighteen years of being sprayed with polyethylene glycol.

The Vasa in its new permanent home (not being sprayed anymore).

   Twenty-four thousand objects have been found that were on the ship on that luckless day, including sails, cannon, tools, coins, glasses, clothing and sixty-four bronze ditto and etcetera. With a displacement of 1300 tons it’s fair enough to say that the ship is sixty-two metres [or 69m] long, though it looks smaller (looking down) than I thought it was going to be. But some of the carvings/sculptures were very interesting – there were seven hundred of them, once gilded and painted; some figures doing everyday things like scratching his chin.

   It is quite interesting, and there’s more to come when they eventually move the Wasa to a new museum and restore the rigging and put the cannon on deck again.

   I left the museum and didn’t watch the film and caught the bus back to somewhere, chatting to a Tasmanian girl on a Rotary scholarship. I returned to the Hostel, had a shower and a sleep, then went out again, wandering around Sergels Torg for something to do. I bought a couple of apples for dinner and ate them – I wasn’t going to stomach much food this night. Returned.