page_title: Vasa (ship)
section_title: Literature and popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Vasa (ship) / Legacy / Literature and popular culture
caption_attribution_description: Merchandise based on the Swedish 17th century warship Vasa on sale at the Vasa Museum gift shop.
context_page_description: Vasa or Wasa is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship foundered after sailing about 1,300 m into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannon were salvaged in the 17th century until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 35 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognised symbol of the "Swedish Empire".
  The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania. She was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship.
context_section_description: Vasa's unique status has drawn considerable attention and captured the imagination of more than two generations of scholars, tourists, model builders, and authors. Though historically unfounded, the popular perception of the building of the ship as a botched and disorganised affair (dubbed "the Vasa-syndrome") has been used by many authors of management literature as an educational example of how not to organise a successful business. In The Tender Ship, Manhattan Project engineer Arthur Squires used the Vasa story as an opening illustration of his thesis that governments are usually incompetent managers of technology projects.
  The Vasa Museum has co-sponsored two versions of a documentary about the history and recovery of the ship, both by documentary filmmaker Anders Wahlgren. The second version is currently shown in the museum and has been released on VHS and DVD with narration in 16 languages. In late 2011, a third Vasa-film premiered on Swedish television, with a longer running time and a considerably larger budget (with over 7.5 million kronor provided by SVT). An educational computer game, now in its second generation, has been made and is used in the museum and on its website to explain the fundamentals of 17th century ship construction and stability. Several mass-produced model kits and countless custom-built models of the ship have been made. In 1991, a 308-tonne pastiche reproduction of the ship was built in Tokyo to serve as a 650-passenger sightseeing ship. Vasa has inspired many works of art, including a gilded Disney-themed parody of the pilaster sculptures on the ship's quarter galleries. Being a popular tourist attraction, Vasa is used as a motif for various souvenir products such as T-shirts, mugs, refrigerator magnets, and posters. Commercially produced replicas—such as drinking glasses, plates, spoons, and even a backgammon game—have been made from many of the objects belonging to the crew or officers found on the ship.
caption: Merchandise and books based on Vasa on sale at the Vasa Museum gift shop.
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