Micael Ullerteg began building the model after attending a birthday party at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm in the early 2000s. He ordered a building kit with boards and a blueprint, not realizing its five-star rating meant it was for professionals. Ullerteg found the work challenging, such as bending boards by soaking them in water.
After building the hull for ten years, he lost interest in the rigging and spent another decade creating around 100 figures from his imagination. He based much of the model on museum visits and research but sometimes followed his own preferences, like choosing a color other than blue. Ullerteg now struggles to exhibit the model due to fears of damage, and it sits on a high kitchen shelf with its future unclear.
On the packaging there were five stars and I thought 'what does that mean'. Apparently it meant that you should be a professional to build something like this but I didn't know that, of course.
He finds charm in the building process. The real Vasa ship, built in 1626, sank in 1628 after sailing only 1,300 meters, killing about 30 people. It was rediscovered in 1956 and raised in 1961, with the Vasa Museum opening in 1990.
After building the hull for ten years, I had no desire to build the rigging because it is so boring, so then I started building figures instead and worked on that for ten years. So it became very many figures.
There are those who paint the ship blue, but I mean that it should be this color. You do a little as you want. But there are surely those who can have opinions on that.