Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Vasa - Sinking, Wreck and Salvage (Part 2)" video.

When I stood outside the museum I had not much expectations at all. I thought I would see an ugly black-brown wreck large as a school bus, and that the rest of the museum would just be filled with random maritime items of various time periods. But I was wrong. Instead did I see a gigantic ship 5 floors tall and also very long and wide. Its wood was dark and ugly. But when you walked closer to it you could still see great handicraft and sculptures everywhere in the ships rear which were amazingly preserved. I tried to photo the ship a hundred times. But not a single photo can do this gigant justice. The ship is simply too big to capture with a camera from any angle. I walked up some stairs to look down on the top of the ship - and there I could see ropes, masts and holes going down to the ships interior and such details. Its amazing to see what a typical ship of the 1600s could looklike. This ship is like the pirates of the Caribbean for real. The ship is huge and must have been very heavy. 10.000 oak trees died to build this gigant. But still is this ship only half the size of ships that entered service only some decades later. Its fantastic that this big ship could be brought up from the bottom despite being so heavy and huge. And that it is so well preserved despite being so old.
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@Vonstab Its a tragedy. Also most of the writings of Sweden's early history was lost in those flames. Who knows what medieval treasures, Chronicles and statistics that could have been lost there? Its one of great tragedies in world history along side the burning of the library in Alexandria.
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If I like warships I would see the huge Vasa ship which is like 4 floors tall without the mast. And then after that I would also see the Maritime museum in Stockholm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Museum_(Stockholm) And if you are into military history in general then I can recommend Armémuseum and Livrustkammaren. There you can see the clothes of Gustavus Adolphus had when he died in 1632, and also his real horse he had that day stands there. I also think the national gallery is worth a short visit for it surprisingly large amount of famous paintings of Rembrandt or old portraits of Martin Luther. The Vasa museum costs money to visit, but the other places didn't cost me anything to visit when I was there. The folk museum was not my cup of tea however. It costs money to visit and its very centered around nordic culture - so if you are not into that, then I don't think you will find it interesting. The Swedish history museum is more interesting in my opinion, and its free.
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2-4 hours is enough. But thoughts of this ship constantly comes back. It gives an excellent concrete example of what a wooden warship looked like.
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Vasa is just one of Sweden's great warships. The country used to be one of the greatest military powers in Europe during the 1600s and early 1700s. Its military conquered Moscow, Poland, Denmark and all of modern day Germany. So the history of the Swedish army is more impressive than the history of its navy. But Vasa was the most powerful warship in the world when it was built. Kronan was also the most powerful warship in the world. So Sweden built lots of warships and it did had one of the strongest navies in Europe. Only Spain had a stronger navy. And if one walks a bit longer into modern time, then only France and England would have stronger navies than Sweden. The maritime world have always been a global one. And ships and commanders could serve one country after another, seamen were an international community. Tordenskiold (Norway's naval hero and equivalent to Admiral Nelson) even planned to move to Sweden help Sweden fight against Russia, only a few years after the long war between Norway and Sweden was over. During the many wars in the late 1600's would the neutral Sweden become the largest naval power in the world, because France, England and the Netherlands were constantly at war with each other, and their merchant ships came to Sweden, and wanted to register their ships as Swedish merchant ships. And sail under the Swedish neutral flag - to not get plundered by British, French or Dutch warships or privateers. Sweden also supplied all navies in Europe with the materials they needed - iron and copper from Sweden, tar from Finland (Österbotten), rope from the Baltics, and Oak tree from the Baltics, Pomerania and Sweden (Blekinge).
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I love my country Sweden. But I cannot say I like the current generation of people living in it. It's currently in a dark age. But when it pulls it shit together, then it can be the best country in the world. Then it can conquer Moscow and Prague. And it can innovate the worlds most sold medicine of its day (Losec) and being the worlds strongest economy. And totally dominate music creation worldwide like Max Martin.
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I heard that it took 5% of the GDP of the mighty Swedish empire to build this ship. So of course it was a painful loss. Just look at the 5% drop of the GDP of Greece during the Eurocrisis and one realize that even a seemingly small GDP number drop can be felt hard. It was also a prestige loss to lose this ship. And Sweden's enemies surely felt some relief by seeing the most powerful ship of its day, the Bismarck of the 1600's falling into the ocean shortly after setting sail. One should however not over-state the disaster either which I feel like Swedish historian often do. This loss was by far not the worst loss of the Swedish navy. The Scanian war was much more a disaster for Sweden. Half the Swedish navy was wiped out by naval battles and the other half was in stormy waters... so Sweden had to rebuild its entire battle fleet after the war. Sweden was a Great Power back in the 17th century. So it was of course unthinkable that Sweden would not have to rebuild its navy, despite its reconstruction would eat up a large part of the GDP the coming years or even decades. And also remember that Sweden did look very different on European maps than it does today. Sweden was the largest country in Europe. It had territories not just in Sweden to defend, but also Finland, Germany and the Baltics. And having a strong navy was essential to defend the country against its many hostile neighbors. It enabled fast troop transports. It enabled amphibious landings behind enemy lines and prevented the enemy from doing the same. And it could protect trade and threaten enemy trade and support sieges. The disasterous war gave Sweden also the advantage of not being stuck in past paths. Now it could move its base of the Swedish navy to a more suitable location - from Stockholm it was moved to Southern Sweden in a town named Karlskrona. And the new fleet would have the most modern ships which were mass produced.
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For what I read after a quick googleing is that that forest was grown in the 1830s by the navy. Which is quite understandable given the dramatically changed strategic situation for Sweden. It had just lost Finland and the Baltics to Russia and Pomerania had been lost to Prussia. So most of the oak tree growing areas had been lost when Sweden lost its Baltic and North German provinces. And the need for timber was important for national security. Warships made from iron and steel had still not had their breacktrough. So oak timber was needed for warships. Since this type of wood is very hard and durable, it is therefore being the gold standard material for building warships (While cheap low quality wood from spruce was used to build some merchant ships). The strategic situation had changed along with Sweden's new borders. Stockholm was no longer located in the middle of the Swedish Baltic empire. With the loss of Finland did now Russian troops now sit very close to the Swedish capital which now were located on the eastern part of the new Sweden. Having a navy to protect this vulnerable Capital from an amphibous invasion now became important. In the past was Sweden's main shield against Russian aggression the Swedish army and the border fortresses in Finland along the border with Russia. But they fell into Russian hands after bribes and treason, and Finland was thereby lost in 1809. And so did Swedish owned Finland history end after 800 years. Anyways. I am no tree expert but I think that a tree needs about 30 years to grow. So I don't think centuries of planning is necessary. But decades of planning is however long term indeed. Especially back in those days when people died at the age of 35 or 50. But I think this project did indeed involve much planning. You need many oak trees (10.000!) just to build a warship like Vasa which was less than half the size of the warships of the 1700s. And making a forrest and then cutting down all trees at once doesn't work if you want a long term substainable supply of timber for the navy for all time to come. At most can you cut down 1-3% of all trees in a forrest if you wanna stay within a substainable rate. So you can cut down 3 trees out of 100. And then you have to plant new trees and wait 30 years before they can replace the trees you just have cut down.
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Sweden do have some great naval historians such as Jan Glete, Leos Müller and Lars Ericson Wolke. I don't know why a foreginer got to work for the museum, but he is clearly very knowledgeable and speaks English that is pleasant to my ears.
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