Karlskrona

Under Danish rule, Trossö was farmland and grazing, and the nearest town was Lyckeby on the mainland, which lost its privileges when Christian IV founded Kristianopel in 1599. The Treaty of Roskilde made Blekinge Swedish in 1658, and Sweden, then the dominant power in the Baltic, wanted its fleet out of Stockholm, where it was regularly trapped by winter ice. An ice-free harbour among sheltering islands, facing Denmark and close to Sweden's German and Baltic provinces, was the answer. In 1679 the crown forced the island's owner, the farmer Vittus Andersson, to sell, and the town was founded on 10 August 1680, named Karl's Crown after Charles XI. Ronneby's people were made to move here, and shipwrights came from Ostrobothnia and Stockholm.

Erik Dahlbergh's plan of 1694 shaped the town, and Nicodemus Tessin gave it a uniform baroque style. By 1711 the dockyard was Sweden's largest industrial employer, with 1,100 workers; its oldest dock, the Polhem dock, is cut into the rock. Around the middle of the 18th century Karlskrona had about 10,000 people and was the third largest town in the kingdom, but plague killed about 7,000 in 1701–11, and epidemics struck again in 1741 and 1789. A fire in 1790 burned most of the town, and the plan to make it a new capital was never realised.

The railway arrived in 1874, and an electric tram ran from 1910 to 1949. In October 1981 the Soviet submarine U 137 ran aground in the archipelago nearby, briefly raising tension with the Soviet Union. In 1998 the naval port was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Karlskrona is known as Sweden's only baroque city, and its culture is bound up with the navy. The naval port, the dockyard, the fortifications on the islands and the three churches on Trossö make up the World Heritage Site, and the Naval Museum, the most visited in the town, draws about 250,000 people a year. Its core is the collection of ship models begun in 1752, along with the figureheads carved by Johan Törnström, the navy's royal sculptor in the 1700s.

The town has long been a mix of peoples: a German community had its own church and parish from 1680 until 1846, and a Jewish congregation existed from 1785 to 1994. Rosenbom, the wooden poor box outside the Admiralty Church, has been a local character since the 18th century and entered literature through Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Karlskrona also appears in Patrick O'Brian's The Surgeon's Mate as the base of the British Baltic fleet.

The great day of the year is Lövmarknaden, the Leaf Fair held on the day before Midsummer's Eve, which draws tens of thousands of visitors. In summer the harbour once hosted a festival called The Sail, since replaced by a Skärgårdsfest, an archipelago festival. Local sports clubs include teams in handball, football and ice hockey.

About 37,000 people lived in the town itself in 2021 and around 60,000 in the municipality, which spreads over some 30 islands — Trossö, Saltö, Sturkö, Hästö, Långö and Aspö among them — and the mainland. Most islands are joined by roads, while Aspö depends on its car ferry.

The navy is still central: Karlskrona has Sweden's largest naval base and the headquarters of the Swedish Coast Guard, and work still goes on at the old shipyard. Civilian industry has a strong presence too, especially information technology, and the biggest employers include Telenor Sverige, Ericsson, NKT and Roxtec. The Blekinge Institute of Technology, founded in 1989, has its main campus here, with about 8,000 students and 600 staff.

The town is also a gateway across the Baltic: Stena Line ferries to Gdynia in Poland carry nearly 500,000 people a year. Life follows the seasons of the archipelago: in summer residents head for the islands, beaches and boats, and in winter islands such as Aspö grow quiet, with little open beyond the local shop.

A dish of Blekinge and its neighbouring provinces is the kroppkaka, a boiled potato dumpling usually filled with pork and onion and served with melted butter, lingonberry jam or cream. Each province makes it differently, and Blekinge's version, known as grey kroppkakor, is made almost entirely from raw potato with only a little boiled potato. Fillings of eel and seabirds were once eaten by the poor in Blekinge and on Öland, though pork is by far the most common.

Day-to-day eating centres on the pedestrian streets of Trossö, Ronnebygatan and Rådhusgatan, and the square at the top of the hill, where Swedish restaurants sit beside sushi bars, kebab shops with seating and pubs. Some restaurants serve smörgåsbord-style lunches, and cafés do steady business with fika, the afternoon coffee-and-cake break. In summer, eating moves out to the archipelago, where seasonal cafés such as Kafé Måsen in Torhamn add live music to the menu.