No food at the castle

Nyköping, which translates into English as Newmarket, is a town not far from us in Trosa. Prior to 1230, it was called Aros. There’s evidence that people lived in the area from about 2,000 BCE. In around 1444 it received its royal charter, making it one of the Cities in Sweden, something that is now defunct. The charter allowed it to be what is called a stad. And there’s a shiny new stadhuset (town hall to us English speakers) in the square.

A rather unpleasant episode in the history of Nyköping occurred in 1317 and has become known as the Nyköping Banquet. This banquet is re-run every year, in play form, in the grounds of Nyköping Castle.

It tells the story of how King Birger Magnusson and Queen Märta invited his brothers Valdemar and Erik over for tea one night. There was a bit of animosity between siblings, and Birger took the opportunity to lock his brothers up, ironically without food. They both died of starvation. The king and queen ended up running off to Denmark because the whole episode ended up in a civil war. It must be a jolly play. We definitely have to go.

Incidentally, in the 14th century, the castle was renowned as the strongest in Sweden and the town’s coat of arms possibly depicts the castle.

Not that we saw the castle today. Instead, we walked down the occasionally pedestrianised centre street. The street is divided into east and west, with a bridge in the middle, over the river Nyköpingsån.

The bridge has a heart painted in the middle of the road, with Öst (East) and Väst (West) written either side.

The town has burned down twice, the second time by the Russians in 1719 as they rowed up and down the Swedish coast, burning and pillaging during the Russian Pillage.

Nyköping was well known as an automobile manufacturing town. This, rather strangely, came about when NK, the well-known Swedish department store, decided to put their furniture factory there. As an unlikely spin-off, NK created AB Nyköpings Automobilfabrik (ANA) which, under licence, built cars and trucks for American and British car companies. It eventually merged with SAAB. It was the largest employer in the town until SAAB was bought by General Motors and the company moved to Trollhättan causing around 2,000 job losses.

Now it seems like a pretty, sleepy little town. At least it does after 4pm on a Sunday.

We were there to drop off a load of clothes at the Green Storage facility. This is to make the car packing a little easier on Tuesday when we move to a new house. After locating and filling our ‘locker’ it seemed only right to head into town for a bit of a wander down the main road where nothing was open.

Funnily enough, among other international towns, it is twinned with Kangaroo Point, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.