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.
History of Stockholm
In contrast with other Swedish cities, all of which were self-supporting, Stockholm was completely dependent of the transit passing through the city—it had, for example, about the same number of domestic animals as Uppsala, which only had ten per cent the population of the capital. All goods brought into Stockholm had to pass through one of six customs stations, and approximately three-fourths of them were exported from the city. Half of the remaining items, mostly fishery products, were delivered from the Baltic, and corn came from the Lake Mälaren region. However, during the latter half of the century, the rapidly growing capital could not be supported by the Lake Mälaren region alone and therefore became dependent of corn imported from the provinces.