Stockholm, Sweden travel resource.

Stockholm,Sweden.

Once upon a time, there lived a fisherman was in Bishop of Strängnäs' service at the castle of Tynnelsö. On an especially beautiful day the fisherman caught an enormous salmon, which he wanted to keep all for hismself. Therefore, he decided to flee across the islands of Lake Mälaren and he ended up on an island at the outlet of the big lake - this becoming Stockholm's first inhabitant.
This popular story about the salmon fisher is one of many legends of how Stockholm came to be founded. With regards to the name Stockholm, there is another known tale that goes as follows: when the town Sigtuna was destroyed by the Estonians, the citizens hid their things of great value in a hollow log and threw it in lake Mälaren. The log (called stock in Swedish) floated ashore at the island (holm) in question, and the homeless Sigtuna citizens thought this was the perfect place to settle down.
Archaeological excavations show that Stockholm was not founded until the 13th century. According to Erikskrönikan, the oldest depiction of medieval Sweden, the Regent Birger Jarl was Stockholm's founder. Stockholm went through a swift expansion and already in a document from 1289 the city is described as one of the most populated in Sweden. From the middle of the fifteenth century, the city had more than 1,000 households and a total population of 5,000 to 6,000, thus being far larger than any other contemporary Swedish city. Back then, and for a long time afterwards, the population consisted of three dominating ethnic groups: the Swedes, who were a majority, the Germans, of whom many were leading merchants, and the Finns who mainly worked as servants and plain craftsmen. Maybe the most important prerequisite for the city's early expansion was the fact that Stockholm had an excellent location as a lock to Mälaren. The elevation of the land made Stockholm's waters the only passage for ships heading towards the Baltic sea.