United we Stand, Divided we Rot

I was going to write about the Moderna Museet. I took detailed notes and read up on the museum’s collection. I had even decided to make The Enigma of William Tell my focus. But then I went to the Vasa Museum, and everything changed.

As the daughter of over-educated parents, I spent at least 5/6ths of my young life inside of museums. Every gift I received between the ages of 0 and 14 was from a museum gift shop. This means two things: 1) I’m very spoiled 2) I have a lot of data points to which to compare new museums. So when I say that the Vasa Museum was incomparable, I say it in earnest. My expectations were high. As soon as we arrived in Stockholm, I texted my dad to let him know I was safe. His immediate reply read: “Promise me that you will go to the Vasa Museum.” So when I say that the museum was shockingly good, I really mean it.

The Vasa was a ship built in the late Renaissance at the order of King Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North and the greatest warrior king that Sweden has ever had. The king ordered two gun decks—an unprecedented move for the Swedish fleet. As a result, the Vasa was taller and thinner than she needed to chart a steady course. She sank about thirty minutes in to its maiden voyage in the port of Stockholm on August 10^th, 1628. This display was totally embarrassing to 17th century Swedes but totally beneficial to the rest of humanity because today, four hundred years later, you can go visit the Vasa in central Stockholm.

The Vasa Museum. Note that all four pictures here come from Wikipedia,
because I was too dumbstruck during my visit to document it properly.
All of my original photos are blurry and tear-stained. 

The fact that the Vasa survives as it does today is a result of an outrageously precise mixture of bizarre human folly and hyper-specific environmental factors. Most of those environmental factors were specific to the Baltic Sea. The brackish waters of the Baltic aren’t salty enough for teredo worms, which feast on sunken ships, to thrive. The silt in the bay is very low in oxygen, and the water is very cold (I've confirmed this), which provided the perfect environment for preserving the intricately carved wooden sculptures. 

The decorated sculptures on the Vasa model's stern.

Visiting the Vasa Museum is a little bit like visiting a cult. To see the exhibits and to interact with the museum staff is to experience, almost, a new way of life—a way of life that revolves around this ship. At every turn—between breaths, in concluding sentences, as an aside—you’re reminded that, “If not for ______ we wouldn’t have this ship.” After enough of this, I too started to feel like the whole world, including historical and environmental factors, were all oriented around getting this ship here today. The whole thing begins to take on a great deal of weight.

And therein lies the artistry. It’s not just that the ship itself is a work of art (though it is). Nor do I necessarily want to argue that all curated exhibits constitute art (though maybe they do). But this one does. In the same way that the ship serves as the focal point for all of the exhibits, physically and theoretically centering everything else, there’s a clear message that underlies and unifies every scrap of supplementary information provided.  Everything ties back to the uniqueness of the circumstances that led to the Vasa’s being here with us today.

The Vasa's Route.

A human exemplar of this was my tour guide, who excreted enthusiasm—but also a grave seriousness—from every pore. His sternness was paired with a head full of long black hairs, each taking off in a different direction. He told us we could ask him anything, and so I did.

Me: How much wider would the ship had to have been to sail stably?

He: About a meter. Just one meter more and we wouldn’t have the Vasa today.

Me: Wow, that’s a small difference. Surely they had little miniatures that they were floating in bathtubs to test these things out. Whence the enormous miscalculations.

He: This was not naval engineering, this was Swedish war propaganda. If it had been naval engineering, we wouldn’t have the Vasa today.

Me: Were all of these sculptures attached to the stern, or were several made from a single piece of solid Oak?

He: Each was made individually by a German craftsman and then attached with nails to the stern. The nails quickly came loose and the sculptures sunk beneath the silt, where they were preserved. If not for those loose nails, we wouldn’t have the Vasa preserved as she is today.

Me: How did the Swedes even know about lions in the early 1600s?

He: I have no idea, but if you ask me, it’s overused.

Except for the last example (which just amused me), all of the guide’s answers managed to cast even distant cosmic perturbances into supporting roles in the Vasa narrative. The plaques around the museum did the same thing constructing a destiny around the Vasa that felt totally inevitable. It was art. But where was the artist? Was it the guide? The documentarians? The curator?

The Vasa as seen from the 6th floor of the museum.

I think it was the Vasa herself, and I’ll tell you why. The Vasa was a uniting force long before this museum was built. On her stern, we see grotesques, sirens, tritons, and Norse Gods commingling. At the time, Norse Gods were tres not chic. They were for common people, which is why it’s all the more striking to find them on the stern of the Vasa, interwoven with renaissance figures, Roman soldiers, and symbols of the Swedish monarchy. This was truly triumphant war propaganda, not just in scale and lavishness, but in the scope of its inclusivity. This was a symbol of Swedish power that everyone—from the prince to the pauper—could feel a part of.

In that sense, the Vasa truly exemplary piece of art—she was created with a greater focus on beauty and emotional power than on military prowess or even structural stability. The Vasa is clearly not just a ship. Ships trade on floating—sailing, even. The Vasa was a symbol of Swedish power. She could instill pride when she wanted and fear when she needed to. This was art created to unite classes, ideologies, and ultimately nations, under a single ruler. And the Vasa succeeds in that purpose—even after spending 333 years under water.