Jönköping

Jönköping lived on cattle, driving oxen north to the mining districts of central Sweden, but its frontier position dragged it into every struggle over the Nordic union, and a Danish army burned it in 1567. In 1612, during the Kalmar War, the burghers set fire to their own town rather than leave it to an expected Danish siege. Gustav II Adolf then had Jönköping rebuilt a little to the east, on a sandy spit between Vättern and a smaller lake, and founded a rifle works on a stream in the new town. The Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 pushed the frontier far to the south and ended the town's military role, but by then Jönköping had found another: since 1634 it had been the seat of the Göta Court of Appeal.