Riddarfjärden
Riddarfjärden (, "The Knight Firth") is the easternmost bay of Lake Mälaren in central Stockholm. Stockholm was founded in 1252 on an island in the stream where Lake Mälaren (from the west) drains into the Baltic Sea (to the east); today the island is called Stadsholmen and constitutes Stockholm's Old Town.
Stockholm during the Middle Ages
The origin of Stockholm pre-dates its written history and how and why the city evolved in the mid-13th century is still disputed. However, even though events during the 1250s and 1260s remain diffuse, if nothing else, the amount of surviving documents, such as letters and diaries, seem to indicate Stockholm rapidly grew to become the largest city in Sweden during the late 1270s and throughout the 1280s. It is still disputed whether this development was a planned process initiated by the king and German merchants, or a rather spontaneous growth. The lack of the perpendicular city plans and uniformly-sized blocks common in contemporary cities in Germany and Poland, seem to corroborate the latter.