Summer solstice in Stockholm with close to 19 hours of daylight and Happy Mid Summer celebrations continue.
We took a walk to the city to get a few people free pics.
and then hopped on the #82 ferry to Djitgarden, one of the many islands in the Stockholm Archipelago.
How can you be in Stockholm and not visit the ABBA museum. I know a few of you out there love ABBA and know every word to every song. Jeff thought we could, but I wanted to take a chance 🤪.
A great tribute to ABBA and their amazing worldwide following. Everyone was dancing and singing and having the time of their lives…
We met a Viking making flower for bread outside the Viking Museum on the way to see the Vasa. We’ve already visited a few Viking museums so we moved on…
The Vasamuseet (Vasa Museum) houses the amazing Swedish war ship, the Vasa, built in early 1600’s. It was built to fight Poland at a time Sweden wanted to conquer and grow the homeland. We did NOT know its story; only heard of its magnificence and a “must see” museum.
We toured the museum and the size and preservation of this beauty is incredible. We were disappointed that we missed the history of the Vasa movie in English about this monstrosity of a warship.
We knew the ship sunk in the 1600’s and was stuck in mud. Of course we wanted the rest of the story…thank you YouTube.
The Vasa made its maiden voyage out of the Stockholm harbour. It sailed for 20 minutes passing the palace and firing its canons for the King. It turned in the archipelago and a strong gust of wind hit the sails, making it list hard over to one side because of a design flaw making it too top heavy. They still had all the cannon ports open and water rushed in, sinking the massive ship in less than 20 minutes!!!! I’m still in shock…
Not until the 1950’s did they start the process of recovery & to build a museum for a permanent home for the Vasa. It was an extremely delicate, time consuming and costly process to exhume it and to keep the ship in one piece. The black oak wood had to be kept wet to preserve it, and since putting the entire ship in a bath was not possible, they built a super-sized shower to get the job done. Because most of the original nails and bolts were iron and long ago rusted away, they also had to replace the more than 6,000 iron nails and bolts holding the ship together with stainless steel.
It truly is a one of a kind piece of history from 400 years ago; giving scientists a unique look into what it was like to live and work in that day and age.
We’re off to Göteberg on the train tomorrow for a few days, as we continue our journey further South heading towards Europe.
