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44°F / 7°C
(Overcast. Nippy.)
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There have been many wars between Sweden and Denmark throughout history, and the Danes have occupied the fortress Älvsborgs fästning outside of Gothenburg many times. In 1613, Swedish and Danish delegates met in Knäred in the county of Halland for peace negotiations. This time, Denmark had occupied both Älvsborgs fästning and the areas which today constitute the city of Gothenburg. Sweden had to buy them back for the tidy sum of one million rixdollars.
But all of this happened before Gothenburg existed as a city. The town is one of many that were founded by the government in the 17th century. This was part of their economic policy, because urbanization made it much easier for the king to exert control over businesses and collect taxes from the citizens. The inspiration for this came from Holland.
The Dutch had a lot of influence in Gothenburg. In the late 16th century, king Karl IX improved relations with Holland and in 1603, while staying at Älvsborg Castle, he decided to build a town on the island of Hisingen. The king wanted to create a miniature Dutch colony and construction began in 1604. This made the Danes rather nervous, however, and in 1611 the Kalmar war broke out. The Danes occupied Älvsborgs fästning, and you know the rest of the story.
In 1619, the new king Gustav Adolf II was staying Älvsborg Castle. The Danes had reduced Gothenburg on Hisingen to ashes, but the Swedes would not give up. Instead, they planned a new site for Gothenburg on the mainland, a location which would be much easier to defend. It is said that Gustav Adolf II looked out from a hill in the marshlands, where Gothenburg now rests, pointed and said: "This is where we will build the town." This event is represented by a statue on Gustav Adolfs torg. But this statue is actually a copy of the original one, which fell into the sea off the Danish coast, after which it was melted down in Germany in 1942.
Göta älv, the river which runs through Gothenburg, has always played an important role in Swedish history. Archeologists have found the remains of an early Stone Age settlement from c. 7000 BC in the district of Kungsladugård near the river. In the 11th century, the river constituted the border between Sweden and Norway.
in the 17th century, Gothenburg boasted the most advanced defence system in Europe. It had a water-filled moat, a wall around the entire city, and two fortified towers Skansen Kronan and Skansen Lejonet. Amsterdam, with its regular blocks and canals with trees and bridges, served as the prototype for the city planners. A large part of the city area was marshlands with deep layers of mud. This required a lot of draining, but piling-works were also employed. It is because of the mud that there is no subway in Gothenburg.
Today, the district inside the moat is considered extremely attractive, but that has not always been the case. King Gustav Adolf had such trouble populating the area that he gave tax reductions to those who settled there. And those who still resisted found their houses burned down.
There were three types of building structures in Gothenburg at this time: stone houses, wooden houses, and houses built with a combination of both materials. Kronhuset was built during the period of 1642-1654 by the Dutch, and it was constructed entirely out of red brick on a site which had been a mass grave for cholera victims. It was built as a storage facility for cloth, grain and gunpowder for the military branch of the state, Kronan.
Trade has always been important to Gothenburg. In 1731, the Swedish East Indies Company was established. The import of goods from the East Indies was not a new concept, the leading nations had been doing business with the Indies for more than a century. At first, business was thriving and the company made more money than the state did at that time. The first ship left port in 1732 and came back with silk, tea and china. But in the late 18th century, times got harder. The fleet was old and there were import restrictions on tea in England and Holland. In 1806, the last ship returned to Gothenburg and in 1807 the company went bankrupt.
Nearly all Swedish towns have experienced more or less devastating fires. In 1639, the City of Gothenburg adopted fire safety statutes which placed the responsibility for fire safety squarely on the shoulders of the local populace. But that didn’t prevent additional serious fires from reducing entire city blocks to ashes. Between 1660 and 1820 there were eleven large fires, but thanks to the canals, which divided the town into large city blocks, the damage was limited by natural fire-breaks.
In spite of all the fires, the custom of building in stone didn’t really catch on until the end of the 18th century. But with a new building code adopted in 1803, Gothenburg evolved from a town with wooden houses, characteristic for the time, into a modern city with tall stone buildings. These houses were built in the centre of town, while lower wooden buildings remained a feature of less fashionable areas.
In one hundred years, from 1800 to 1900, Gothenburg grew by leaps and bounds. In 1820 the population was about 20 000 and in 1920 it was ten times higher at 200 000. The first wave of industrialism reached Gothenburg in the middle of the 19th century, and the rich just kept getting richer. Large donations to the city conveyed immortality to people like Chalmers, Sahlgren, Dickson, Renström and Keiller, whose names still live on all over town.
During World War II, the engineering industry experienced a tremendous boom, especially the ship yards and the ball bearing industry. This engineering boom peaked in the middle of the 20th century, and Gothenburg experienced a shortage of both labour and housing. After 1974, many of the shipyards went bankrupt and the times favoured the automobile industry and the public sector instead.
In recent times, one of the more notable events is the construction and inauguration in 1994-1995 of the new opera house down by the harbour.
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