How Did All This End Up in One Swedish Castle?

How did a bizarre painting of an emperor and an actual 17th century time bomb end up in this Swedish castle? And those aren't even the craziest things in this place. So I went looking for the stories behind them to try and figure out how all of these things ended up under the same roof. And the first story I followed took me all the way back to Prague. Which was convenient because I'd actually been there just a few months earlier. And at the time I had absolutely no idea that one of the strangest things I'd later find in a Swedish castle had started its journey here. This is Vertumnus. Well, not this one exactly, but this is representing Vertumnus. It is actually a portrait of Emperor Rudolf III painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. And as you might have noticed, is almost entirely made out of fruit, vegetables and flowers. I mean, everybody's gotta have a right? Arcimboldo worked for the imperial court for years and the emperor was a big fan of his work. But as strange as this painting is, its story is even stranger. Because you see, in 1648, right at the end of the 30 years war, the Swedish army seized Prague castle. And while they were there, they helped themselves to a pretty spectacular amount of Rudolf's collection. Paintings, sculptures, books, weapons, scientific instruments. Basically anything that wasn't nailed down was good enough to take home. And the man behind the decision that actually put all of those things in motion was Carl Gustav Wrangel. Which as it turns out, was quite the character. But we'll get right back to him in a little bit. Because while the Swedes were cataloging everything they had liberated from Prague, there was this item number 351, described simply as a face of fruit. And I mean, come on, they were wrong. That's how our vegetable man got out of Prague and into Sweden. But before I ended up on the walls of Skoklostar, I actually spent quite a bit of time at another castle. Because apparently, I'm now tracking the movements of a 400 year old vegetable man. This is Bogesund castle. And I'm not here because I need to see another castle. I'm here because the actual painting hung here. Because you see, after being taken from Prague, the painting actually got into the collection of Per Brahe the Younger. And was displayed right here, at Bogesund. So yes, the vegetable man kind of lived here for a while. So this painting's journey went from being in the royal court in Prague, to a nice little castle on the Swedish countryside. In the Swedish countryside. And yet somehow, it hasn't yet reached the castle that this video is all about. Eventually, Vertumnus did make its way to Skoklostar. And after all the crazy things it's been through, it's still here today as part of a permanent exhibition. So you can actually come visit and see the vegetable emperor in all its glory. And if you think that's a strange way for something to get here, it gets considerably weirder. Buried beneath all of this water. Wait, can you be buried underwater? What's the word I'm looking for? Submerged? Submarine? What? Somewhere beneath the water behind me lies a warship that somebody tried to destroy with a technological device so advanced that it seemed almost like witchcraft. Well, back in that time. And somehow this whole story starts with a cheese merchant. You would probably be guarding the cheese. No relation. The date is March 1645. The Swedish fleet is in Vismar, just chilling around and getting restocked, when this guy turns up. Hans Greft. And he claims that he's there to sell cheese. Which would have been fine if some of the soldiers there didn't recognize him as one of the guys that worked for the Danish. And guess who's in charge of the whole operation there? Yep, the same guy. You kind of see where this is going. He has Greft detained and his things thoroughly searched. And instead of finding an ungodly amount of cheese, they find boxes that are filled with flammable material and two clockwork devices. And the plan was really simple. You would just get these boxes filled with flammable material, you would load them onto the ships and you would just set this clockwork timer. And then the ships would just go poof. I think they might go boom. I don't know if they went poof. They might have gone poof. I wasn't there. I wasn't there. And these are the ships that that whole package was designed for. The Draken and the Trelejon. Which is actually the ship we were talking about in the beginning. So you see how all of this might have just turned you into a wizard back then. Because here you are just chilling on the side of the port and you can just predict when a ship would just go up in flames. That would be a back scratcher? A head scratcher back then. As for Trelejon, the ship never got bombed. It actually led a very long and successful life as an admiral ship. But eventually, it did get too old and they had to retire it. They actually sank it right here. It was somewhere beneath this water. And thus turning it into an actual defense for Stockholm itself. So even in death, the ship still defended Stockholm. After all, it was originally a Danish ship. But that is just one part of the story. Because the guy actually kept one of those devices. Which raises an even bigger question. Who the heck was Karl Gustav Wrangel? To figure out who this guy actually was, I had some help from Petri. One of the curators here at Skokloster who spent a few hours showing us around. And this is the man we're talking about. Karl Gustav Wrangel was actually born here at Skokloster in 1613. Although when he was born here, it definitely didn't look like this. Because his career went slightly better than average. He became a colonel at 22, a major general at 25 and eventually ended up a governor general and a count. Basically, the 17th century went extremely well for him. And then in 1654, he apparently decided the family home could use a bit of an upgrade. And by an upgrade, I mean the largest private palace ever built in Sweden. Wrangel didn't exactly build this place to be subtle. This whole place was designed around symmetry. Square building, tower on every corner, four floors and basically an entire floor plan dedicated to, well, showing off. This was obviously his home. But it was also a pretty effective way of telling everybody who walked through the door. Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal. If subtlety was the goal, I can safely say that he kind of missed. And once Petri started showing us around, that became pretty obvious pretty quickly. Even his bedroom was impressive. Which, because apparently privacy hadn't been invented yet, could also be used to receive important guests. There's also dining rooms, reception rooms, paintings, furniture. Basically, everywhere you look, there's another reminder that this man was doing extremely well for himself. And then we walked into this. This is the king's hall. It was used as a dining and reception room, but honestly, I stopped caring about any of that the second I looked up. I'm genuinely not exaggerating when I say this might be the best ceiling I've ever seen in my life. There are 17th century ceilings in Skokulostra and this one is the only one they had painted. And come on, look, it even has a dragon. And the chandelier is literally hanging from the hook in the dragon's mouth. Which incidentally has been hanging here since 1672. And according to Petri, this hasn't actually been taken down ever since. Which is kind of insane. But after walking through all of this, Wrangel starts to make a lot more sense. The more I learn about Wrangel, the man, the guy, the more I realize that we have a lot in common and we would have probably got along very well. We both like to collect things, you know. He likes to collect, you know, this. And, well, I like to collect Funko Pops and museum coins. It's just a little bit of a budget difference. But to understand just how bananas his collecting went, we went up one level to the armory. Yeah, that's a lot of guns. There's so many guns in here it could probably rival a suburban household in Texas. But at first though, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Guns, swords, armor, more guns. But for Wrangel, this wasn't just about owning a massive pile of weapons. He was a military man after all. And part of having a collection like this was keeping up with what was new. Which is why you have plate armor and swords sitting right next to guns. You're basically watching military technology change just by looking around the room. But when you start looking a little bit closer, things start getting a little less military. There's a hammock from South America, a kayak all the way from Greenland, an armadillo, a pufferfish. So clearly his interest went a little bit beyond finding just new ways of killing people. He wanted the new thing, the weird thing, the thing that came from somewhere where most people would never get anywhere near. And I imagine there's a bit of showing off involved as well. Because just think about what it must have been like coming here as one of Wrangel's guests. You've already walked through this enormous castle, you've seen the rooms, the paintings, that completely insane ceiling. And then he brings you up here. Guns covering the walls, armor, new technology, a kayak all the way from Greenland, a freaking armadillo. You're probably not leaving thinking, oh yeah, Carl has some nice things. You're leaving knowing that this guy has money, power, connections and access to things you probably don't. Because you see, this wasn't just a collection. It was him showing you the kind of world he had access to. And for a while it does feel like the whole story is about him. Only that it really isn't. Skoklostra kept changing long after Wrangel was gone. New owners came in, new objects arrived, more stories got added. Wrangel explains a lot of Skoklostra, just not everything inside it. This is one of a handful of objects here connected to a place called New Sweden, which as you might have guessed was not in Sweden, but actually a Swedish colony in North America. And as interesting as that is, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole today. That's not even the craziest connection hiding in this castle. If we jump forward to the 1800s, Skoklostra belongs to Magnus Brahe. And if that name sounds familiar, he's actually the guy who moved Vertumnus from Bogesund to Skoklostra. So somehow we've ended up back here again. Magnus Brahe was also incredibly close to the Swedish king Carl XIV Johan. And Carl Johan had one of those stories that seems absolutely and completely made up. He was actually French, born Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, became one of Napoleon's marshals, somehow ended up king of Sweden, and then helped defeat Napoleon. And one of the stranger pieces of that whole story is unexpectedly an actual horse. His name is Andalus. You see, Bernadotte rode him while fighting in Napoleon's campaigns, and later rode the exact same horse while fighting against Napoleon. And now he's just standing in a hallway at Skoklostra leading towards the armory. Because that's the kind of collection we're dealing with here. And downstairs, there's a permanent exhibition where they've brought together some of the highlights from this wild collection. And you start finding things like a gold pen that actually belonged to Marie Antoinette. At this point, there's absolutely no way we're covering everything in one video. We spent about three hours inside this castle. And honestly, I think we could have spent days. Because over centuries, Skoklostra kept changing, adding more and more stories to its halls. But one room in this castle remained exactly as Wrangel left it. Absolutely frozen in time. Okay, I did not expect this to be this. The unfinished hall. It was supposed to become the grandest room in the entire castle. A massive banqueting hall. But in 1676, Carl Gustav Wrangel died. And the work just stopped. And when I say stopped, it actually froze in time. The craftsmen never came back to it. Their benches were left here. Their tools were left here. Even the pieces they were actually working on were left behind. And the entire room was purposefully preserved this way. And after everything we've seen in this castle, this might be the room that tells you the most about it. Because almost everything else here just kept on moving. The castle changed hands, collections grew, things were moving around, new stories were added. But this room didn't get any. And in a weird way, this feels like a perfect metaphor for Skoklostra itself. Because even after all this time, it's still unfinished. There's still a lot more to find out. If this place caught your interest, come and see it for yourself. Because there are so many things to see. Yeah, we could not have covered them all in just one video. Because the crazy thing is that we spent about three hours here and we haven't even touched the grounds yet. Which are quite fantastic to say the least. Yeah, and that whole Sweden had a colony thing. I ain't leaving that alone.