Founding
urban area in Landskrona Municipality, Sweden
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Landskrona is a town in Scania, Sweden. Located on the shores of the Öresund, it occupies a natural port, which has lent the town at first military and subsequent commercial significance. Ferries operate from Landskrona to the island of Ven, and for many years there was also a connection to Copenhagen. Landskrona is part of the Øresund region.
It is the seat of Landskrona Municipality. Landskrona is also the name of a district in Landskrona Municipality which is slightly smaller than the urban area.
The city of Landskrona is usually claimed to have been founded in 1413 by the King of Denmark, Eric of Pomerania, as a trading city intended to compete with Danish towns under the control of the Hanseatic League. There is, however, evidence found in the Danish National Archive, which mention the town by the name "Landzcrone" already in 1405.
The site occupies one of a few natural harbours in Scania, which at that time was part of Denmark. At the time of foundation, the site held a fishing settlement named Sønder Sæby. The original name of the officially founded town was Landszcrone, which changed to Landskrone sometime before 1450.
A Carmelite monastery was founded in 1410, English merchants were granted the privileges in a royal charter in 1412, and the town itself was chartered in 1413. The monastery was closed by King Christian III after the reformation, but survives in the name of the street "Karmelitergatan".
Construction of Landskrona Citadel started in the 1540s under the orders of Christian III. The castle was completed in 1559, and consisted of a fortress with a surrounding wall and moat. A huge system of moats was constructed around the castle over the centuries; parts of four of the moats survive. Sweden's second, and oldest surviving, allotment area is located in the northern part of the citadel.
The town supported the king Christian II in 1525, and opposed the Reformation in Denmark (1535); in both cases it found itself on the losing side. The reformist king Christian III of Denmark opted not to retaliate against the town, and instead founded a castle to protect the harbour. The castle, built where the monastery had been situated until the Reformation, was completed by 1559.
After Scania was ceded to Sweden in 1658, the good harbour and strong fort motivated plans to make Landskrona a commercial center of the acquired territory, with extraordinary privileges for foreign trade. The castle was reinforced by bastions, and the area inside the moats extended to 400x400 meters. The castle was considered the strongest and most modern in Scandinavia, but was temporarily lost to the Danes after a comparably short siege lasting from July 8 to August 2, 1676. The commandant, Colonel Hieronymus Lindeberg, was consequently sentenced to death for high treason. During the Danish occupation in 1676–1679, Landskrona Citadel constituted a mobilisation centre for formal enlistment of pro-Danish guerrilla fighters.
In 1753 the Swedish military commander feared that the tower of Sancti Johannis Baptistae church could be a threat to the citadel and demanded the demolition of the church. Even though the cornerstone of the new Sofia Albertina Church was laid the following year, it was not inaugurated until 1788, and was finally completed in 1812. Unusually for a church that is not a diocesan seat, the new church was built with two towers, possibly in compensation for its much larger medieval predecessor.
Landskrona's military importance declined after the 18th century. The continued Swedish–Danish wars led to Karlskrona replacing Landskrona as a naval base, as it is located at a safer distance from Denmark. Although the fortifications at Landskrona were expanded considerably between 1747 and 1788, they were condemned in 1822, whereafter the garrison was abolished in 1869. The last military regiment, Skånska Husarregimentet, K5 was renamed and moved from Landskrona to Uppsala in 1926. Today the walls and moats of the fortifications of Landskrona Citadel are a recreational area and the castle holds a museum. On the northern side, an allotment-garden area of cottages was founded in the final years of the 19th century, and is today the oldest of its kind in Sweden. The military's large exercise field became a public heath, today called "Exercisfältet" or "Exan".
The town grew quickly after the industrial revolution and the subsequent urbanization. During the First World War, a large shipyard, Öresundsvarvet, was constructed. In the mid-1970s the shipyard employed more than 3,500 people, in a town with only 30,000 inhabitants. The shipyard was closed down in stages from the late 1970s, finally closing in 1983.
On 14 May 1919 the Swedish engineer and flight pioneer Enoch Thulin, who lived and worked in Landskrona, died when he crashed his own airplane at the Södra Fäladen fields. His funeral service was held in Sofia Albertina Church.
Between 1930 and 1939 the Saxtorp TT-races were held just south of the town. The races attracted up to 160,000 attendees and are considered the largest sporting events by crowd size ever held in Sweden.
The town's centre and buildings along the entrance streets generally consist of buildings with between two and seven floors. As a fortified town, stone houses were preferred instead of wooden houses, so the city boasts few examples of traditional Danish and Scanian half-timbered houses. Apart from the Citadel and Sofia Albertina Church, other notable 19th-century or older buildings are "Rådhuset", the Town Hall, Landskrona museum, the old railway station building and the theatre.
Much of the town's central parts, and buildings along the entrance roads are characterized by the work of the former town architects Fredrik Sundbärg 1901–1913 and Frans Ekelund 1913–1949. Sundberg created a number of monumental buildings such as the old water tower, the school Tuppaskolan, the power station, a hot bathhouse (demolished in the 1970s), and two large blocks of flats intended for the working class, Falken and Gripen . Ekelund, who was a believer in the Garden city movement, reserved areas for people to build customised homes, typically smaller houses with cellars and two floors.
Ralph Erskine created the row house area called Esperanza (Spanish for hope) around 1970. The new water tower came into operation the same year.
Around the Town Hall Square, all but one building was built before functionalist architecture became popular. Some older buildings were demolished in the mid-20th century. Falcks hörna, a block-corner building with a rather unusual appearance, was demolished in the middle of the night in 1971 amid protests.
A now-defunct water tower in town was built in 1904 after drawings from the then city architect Fredrik Sundbärg and has a height of 65,9 meters. The Water Tower was taken out of use in 1975 and in 1992 parts of the building was converted into rental estate.
A natural deep harbour has existed here since before the history of the town. It's mentioned in the Danish historical work Saxo Grammaticus from around 1200 The port is based on a natural chute in the sandy sea floor, despite the lack of any nearby debouching river. Since the 18th century, the harbour has been protected by the artificial island Gråen. In the 1960s it had a total quay length of around 3 km As of 2017 its usable quay length has been greatly reduced, with a tally of approximately 1250 meters of remaining quay, and its activity has been low for decades.
The former car ferries to Copenhagen-Tuborg departed from the Nyhamn port, in the northern end. At a common map, it looks like the harbour has two inlets. But the waters immediately south of the harbor are extremely shallow. The northernmost part of Lundåkrabukten, the bay between Landskrona and Barsebäck, is not just shallow, but also largely free of stronger currents. During cold winter periods, Sea ice can then be formed here, much faster than at most other places in Øresund.
For many years, Landskrona was serviced by car ferries and other ships to and from Copenhagen. From 1951 to 1980 the SL ferries operated the route between Port of Tuborg in northern Copenhagen and Landskrona. During most of that period, the Viking Bådene also operated smaller passenger ships between the Inner Harbour of the Port of Copenhagen and Landskrona. They were owned in Denmark, but from around 1970 they were purchased by the Swedish Centrumlinjen but kept their name. The 1973 energy crisis eventually caused the end of this shipping line.
Between 1980 and 1984 different kind of ships and shipping lines offered at least summer time traffic to Copenhagen. And From 1985 Scarlett Line was formed, and once again sailed to Port of Tuborg. From the spring of 1991, Danish Vognmandsruten A/S merged with Scarlett Line, maintaining the established name and began to sail every hour. The new shipping line mainly was intended to for transporting lorries. In the autumn of 1993 Vognmandsruten A/S went bankrupt and this put an end to the car and lorry ferry traffic from Landskrona.
However, hydrofoil speedboats Flygbåtarna AB, which previously only had served passenger traffic in the southern part of Øresund, between Malmö and Copenhagen, now began to operate also from both Landskrona as well as from Helsingborg. Not until March 2002, almost two years after the inauguration of the Øresund Bridge did Flygbåtarna AB threw in the towel.
Landskrona is well known for having several allotment areas in and around the city centre. The first allotment area in Sweden was located in Malmö; however, it has long been gone since. The allotments located between the inner and outer moats of the Landskrona Citadel area make up the oldest allotment area in Sweden currently in use to date and are therefor of historic significance. There are currently around 1400 allotments in total located in Landskrona and its periphery, distributed over 6 allotment areas.
Aircraft approaching the nearby Copenhagen Airport to land on Runway 22L pass over the northern part of the town, where they make a sharp right turn towards the south to intercept the localiser around Barsebäck. Most landings at Copenhagen take place at Runway 22L. At the busiest times this can lead to consecutive aircraft passing over Landskrona with less than a minute's gap between them.
From the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, the town's population was fairly stable at around 2,000. Between 1860 and 1918 it grew to a little below 20,000. But from around 1919 until the mid-1970s, Landskrona just grew to some 30,000 inhabitants. Due to the closing of Öresundsvarvet shipyard (only a fraction of its close to 4000 employees work at the "new" renovation shipyard with the same name) and of other heavy industries, the population instead began to fall. Around 1985–1995 Landskrona's population were approximately some 25,000. Thanks to the general immigration (both from upper Sweden and from other countries) to western Scania and the Øresund coast, and due to the new railway station (opened in 2001), the town's population has again grown, and has once again exceeded 30,000 inhabitants, which equals the situation in the early 1970s. The town had 32,229 inhabitants in 2015.
Landskrona was also relatively larger a century ago compared with today. After World War I the town was among the 15 largest in the country. But no longer holds that position. Between approx. 1880 and 1920 was the town transformed from a military town to a town with much heavy industry within many sectors. The Öresundsvarvet shipyard, which opened in 1917, became the largest employer (with close to 4000 employees in the early 1970s). But the industry was not limited to shipbuilding, and a sugar refinery, several textile industries, fertilizers and other chemical plants, as well as a spectrum of various manufacturing industries, grew up. But after the First World War, the town stopped growing as fast as many other Swedish towns did. And the very last military regiment moved to Hässleholm in 1924. Between the mid-1920s and mid-1970s the town grew from approx. 20,000 inhabitants to 30,000. And after the Swedish municipality reforms reached its end point, in 1974, the municipality counted around 38,000 inhabitants.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Landskrona”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.