Commission · Stockholm · 1989–1990

Glass for the
warship Vasa

Reconstructing the glass details of a 17th-century royal warship, in preparation for the 1990 inauguration of the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

The Vasa was the most powerful warship in the Swedish Navy when she was launched in 1628 under King Gustav II Adolf. She was also among the most ornate — decorated with hundreds of carved and gilded sculptures, painted in vivid colours, fitted with glass in her stern lanterns and windows. She sank within twenty minutes of leaving Stockholm harbour on her maiden voyage, taking dozens of sailors with her to the bottom of the harbour.

She lay in the mud for 333 years before being salvaged in 1961, preserved almost entirely intact by the cold, low-salinity water of the Baltic. The decades-long work of conservation, reconstruction, and documentation that followed involved craftspeople across dozens of disciplines. Eva Fidjeland was among them.

Her task was to reconstruct the ship's original glass — to understand from historical documents and material evidence what that glass would have looked like, how it was made, and how to make it again. Mouth-blown glass, leaded in the manner of the 17th century, fitted to the precise dimensions of the ship's original openings.

The commission demanded both technical mastery and historical imagination. It remains, in Eva's own assessment, among the most demanding and meaningful work of her practice.