Kira Looks For Extra Colors: Museet!

Second day of the weekend, third and final day of the Stockholm card! We spent all of yesterday at museums (museet is Swedish for museum). Sorry I didn't update you yesterday; by the time I finally got around to writing for this blog, our internet cut out (again).

The Vasa Museet

Knowing how we are in museums, Hannah and I had only two things on our list. The Vasa and the Nordiska Museet. Of course, my camera had other plans as far as pictures go. My battery died at the Vasa. Sorry again!! I'll make up for it by posting some of Hannah's pictures from other times.
We went to the Vasa first thing in the morning. Well… sort of first thing. We left the boat in time to make it to the museum directly as it opened, but through slow lines (waaaay slower than it needed to be, ahem.) and closed bus lines, we arrived at the museum an hour after we had expected to (zen…. breathe in, breath out, breath in…). I'm very glad we arrived when we did though- when we left, the line was somewhere between 60 to 70 meters long.

The Vasa

The Nose of the Vasa

The Vasa museum is centered around a ship. One ship (want to guess what its name is?). The Vasa was built in 3 years, between 1625 and 1628, for the war between Sweden and Poland at the time. King Gustav III wanted to build a ship bigger and more impressive than any yet made and pressured the builders to finish fast. The ship was intricately carved and painted with many figures and symbols representative of and glorifying the king and Sweden. It was as much a piece of propaganda as it was a battle ship. As it turns out, two floors of cannons, a narrow body, and a high water line are not the elements of a good combination when it comes to sea-faring vessels. The Vasa spent a grand total of twenty minutes in the service of the crown before it sank in the harbor on its maiden voyage. Because the harbors here are brackish instead of salty, the Vasa was preserved very well and was resurrected in the 1960s.

Double cannon decks

The museum itself surrounds the ship and is kept very dim in order to better preserve the ship, which is beginning to fall apart. Seven floors are required to give visitors a look at the ship from bottom to top and the size of the Vasa is incredibly impressive. It would have been a very successful advertisement for the Swedish navy had it actually been able to float.
We weren't allowed to go inside the ship (I wish we could), but there were plenty of recreations and glass enclosed artifacts to keep us interested (not to mention the enormous ship in the center of the building).

A model of the Vasa

The intricate back of the ship

The deck of the ship

Thank you dad, for not making me wear this.

After leaving the Vasa, we headed over to the Nordiska Museet (the Nordic Museum). The weather was fantastic, a clear contrast to Saturday (It figures that we spent all day inside on the day with nice weather. Oh well. Skansen was probably more crowded today.). The Nordiska Museet is right behind the Vasa.

The SIDE of the Nordiska

I was originally expecting the Nordiska Museet to be like other history museums I have encountered. I thought I would be looking at old portraits, preserved Viking ships, swords, historical summaries, etc. As it turns out, the museum is more focused on modern culture. Some of the exhibits included a comparison of fashion from the 1700s to modern day cyberpunk, an exhibition on folk art, a section on the Sami people, and a series of photographs from present-day Italy. I wasn't what I was expecting at all, but it was still fairly interesting. The most impressive part of the museum was the architecture of the building. The man who designed it was inspired by palaces, nationalism, and styles like those of the Renaissance period. The entry hall is enormous. You might expect somebody important and medieval to come striding down it looking serious. The first thing you see as you walk in is a really, really big statue of one of the King Gustavs (I think it was the first one) sitting in a chair decorated with wheat (the familial symbol; the word is vase… Remind you of a certain ship?) near the words Warer Swenske! (Be Swedish!). The architect had a really big thing for nationalism.

When we got back (we walked because our Stockholm cards had expired and we didn't want to buy train tickets), I was very tired of moving around, so I managed to be very productive on the computer and finished my paper for this half of the class (yay! makes this week a bit less packed). I've been fairly on-top of things for this program, which is really good, considering that many people here are very stressed about finishing their assignments and the fact that I've been kind of slacking on getting these posts in to you guys on time.
My last nine days in Stockholm! Better use them well!

PS: As vaguely promised, Hannah's pictures from Skansen.