Vadstena

Vadstena's history begins with a royal gift. In 1346 King Magnus IV and Queen Blanche left ten farms, including Vadstena, to found an abbey for Bridget, the Swedish noblewoman and visionary who became Saint Bridget. The convent was set up in a 13th-century royal palace beside Lake Vättern. Bridget's daughter Catherine arrived in 1374 with her mother's relics and became abbess; the abbey was blessed in 1384, Bridget was canonised in 1391, and her remains were moved into the abbey church in 1394. As the motherhouse of the Bridgettine Order, Vadstena became the greatest pilgrimage site in Sweden, and the town received its town privileges in 1400.

The Reformation ended that world slowly. The convent survived longer than most, even regaining the right to take novices under John III in 1575, but in 1595 most of the remaining nuns left for a Bridgettine abbey in Danzig, and the last Swedish Bridgettine nun of Vadstena died in 1605. In the same years the Vasa kings were building the castle. Gustav I began it in 1545 as a fortress to guard against attack from the south; his son Duke Magnus, who suffered from mental illness and was the only son not to become king, turned it into a residence, and by its completion in 1620 every Vasa king had contributed.

From the 16th century the town also housed a hospital, first for poor pilgrims and later for psychiatric patients. In 1935 Bridgettine sisters returned to Vadstena, and in 1963 their convent was refounded as a house of the original branch of the order.

Saint Bridget still shapes the town. Since 1999 she has been one of the six patron saints of Europe, and the abbey church, now a Lutheran parish church in the Diocese of Linköping, celebrates the daily offices and receives 2,500 to 3,000 pilgrims a day in summer, many arriving on the Saint Birgitta Ways. The modern Bridgettine sisters live close by, and both Lutheran and Catholic pilgrims visit the church.

The town has a long craft tradition. Townspeople earned extra money from bobbin lace, which has been made in Vadstena since the 17th century and gave the town a reputation still celebrated in its lace museum. The sculptor Gottfrid Larsson, whose house now holds that museum, is remembered locally too.

Music is the other strand. Vadstena-Akademien, a music academy founded in 1964 by the singing teacher Ingrid Maria Rappe, is a major commissioner of new Swedish opera, and its productions have been broadcast on Swedish television and radio. Locals pronounce the name of the town "Vasstena".

About 5,800 people lived in Vadstena in 2023. Although Statistics Sweden counts only places with more than 10,000 inhabitants as cities, Vadstena is still called a city for historical reasons, having received its privileges in 1400. In the 1970s it was run for some years as part of Motala Municipality before regaining its own, and today the town is the seat of Vadstena Municipality.

Tourism plays a central part in the local economy, with around 500,000 day visitors a year, most of them in summer. The rest of the year the town is much quieter. The castle remains a working building: since 1899 it has housed the provincial archives, part of the National Archives, whose staff work in its eastern half.

Life follows the seasons, with walking and skiing on Omberg, and regional buses connect the town to the railway stations at Motala, Mjölby and Linköping. The footballer Stina Blackstenius is among the people associated with the town.

Lake Vättern supplies the town's best-known food. The lake is known for its Arctic char, a relict species dating from the end of the ice age, and also holds whitefish and salmon; local fishing serves the districts around it, and visitors may fish with a rod as long as they do not use nets. In the village of Borghamn, on the lakeshore south of town, fish can be bought at the harbour. Many towns around the lake also take their drinking water directly from Vättern.

Everyday eating is Swedish husmanskost, traditional home cooking built on local ingredients such as pork, fish, potatoes, root vegetables, cabbage and berries. Dishes include pea soup, rotmos med fläsk, mashed root vegetables served with pork, herring, most often pickled, and meatballs with brown cream sauce and lingonberry jam. The Östergötland plain that surrounds the town is rich farmland.

Fika, the coffee break with a bun or pastry, is part of every Swedish day, and Swedish bakeries make a wide range of buns, cakes and biscuits to go with it. In summer, when the town fills with day visitors, the centre around Storgatan is the natural place to look for a meal, and two of the old abbey buildings have been converted for a hotel and a restaurant.