Dead People's Society - "Helge"

The stern of Vasa

Sunday 10th August 1628 did the brand new Swedish warship Vasa set sail for its first journey. Swedish king Gustav II Adolf (nephew of Cecilia Vasa) had had it built. It did not end well. The ship sank barely having left the harbour in Stockholm, but was salvaged in 1961 and can today be seen at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. (I really recommend that museum if you go to Stockholm. It is one of my absolute favourites. Not just in said town.)

On board and around Vasa were the remains of at least 16 individuals found and I thought I should talk about one of those. Since we do not know any names of the individuals found on Vasa, they have got name based on the Swedish spelling alphabet (with the exception of the two women Beata and Ylva). This particular man has been called Helge, so that is what I will call him in this entry.

Helge's skeleton is very fragmentary, around 2 770 fragments were found together on the port side of lower gun deck. This is quite a lot considering a "normal" body of an adult human being contains 206 bones. A lot of the fragments (c. 2 100) are however too small to estimate which particular bone they have been a part of, but 671 of them could be pieced together.

Vasa

When Vasa keeled over, Helge had the unfortunate faith of being crushed underneath one of the gun carriages and when osteologist Nils-Gustaf Gejvall did the first study of the skeletons from Vasa in 1963, he said that the skeleton was in very bad condition. It was affected by the iron parts of the gun carriage. The skeletons found at Vasa were reburied in 1963, but taken up again in 1989 for a more thorough analysis and can today be seen at the Vasa museum. The years in the ground has further increased the decay and Helge's bones have mildewed.

Together with the skeletons given the names Filip and Gustav, Helge has the most complete skeleton out of all the Vasa skeletons. He however, misses parts of his hands and feet and the skull was broken into pieces. His sex is estimated as "typical male" based on features from remaining skull fragments and his age 33+3 years based on age markers on the femur, humerus and skull seams. Chemical analysis show that he ate a lot of meat.

Besides the bones, the archaeologists also found preserved hair, nails and brain tissue.

Sources
During, Ebba 1994. De dog på Vasa. Skelettfynden och vad de berättar, Vasastudier 16