Last reviewed 20 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 1200–1942
Kalmar grew around a defensive tower raised by the strait around 1180–1200, becoming a castle and walled town fought over by Sweden and Denmark for centuries. Its western gate saw repeated bloodshed, including the mass execution of a surrendered garrison in 1599, decades before fire pushed the town onto Kvarnholmen.
The short answer
On 16 May 1599, twenty-two men from the surrendered garrison of Kalmar Castle were executed without trial, three noblemen and a chaplain beheaded and eighteen others hanged, after the castle fell to Duke Charles following his victory over King Sigismund III at Stångebro. It was the second such mass killing at Kalmar, after 1505.
The restaurant in the City Park in Kalmar. Stereograph. Gust. A. Johnson, Winburne, PA. Series A. Sweden. Restaurangen i Stadsparken i Kalmar. Stereofotografi. Gust. A. Johnson, Winburne, PA. Series A. Sweden. Parish (socken): Kalmar Provin — 1901 · Swedish National Heritage Board from Sweden · No r
16 May 1599
Twenty-two men were executed in four days
Twenty-two men were led out in Kalmar and killed, one after another, on a single day.
All of them served the garrison of Kalmar Castle, the fortress that stands 302 meters from where you are now. They held it for Sigismund III Vasa, king of both Sweden and Poland. His uncle Duke Charles had rebelled against him. Charles crushed Sigismund's army at Stångebro in September 1598. Sigismund fled to Poland and never returned. But the men inside Kalmar Castle kept fighting for him anyway.
Charles sent an army to besiege the castle in March 1599. The town fell in April. The castle held out three more weeks. It surrendered on 12 May.
Four days later, the executions began. Three noblemen commanded the garrison: Johan Larsson Sparre, Kristofer Andersson Grip, and Lars Andersson Rålamb. All three were beheaded. The garrison's chaplain was a priest named Birger. He was beheaded alongside them. The other eighteen men went to the gallows. They were secretaries, officers, and mercenary captains.
Charles had won. Sigismund was formally deposed two months later. The man who ordered the executions became King Charles IX of Sweden. This was the second mass killing the town remembered by that name. In 1505, King Hans of Denmark had executed Kalmar's own mayor and council. They had backed a different rebellion. This happened a century before Charles's men lost their heads at the same gate.
The heads of the three noblemen were set on pikes above the city's western gate.
1525
A surrendered garrison was slaughtered after siege
The castle had already done this once before Charles's men ever laid siege to it.
In 1525, a garrison inside Kalmar Castle held out under siege until the losses became too heavy to bear. They surrendered. It did not save them. The survivors were rounded up afterward and killed, one group after another, in what people at the time already called a bloodbath. Gustav Vasa had just fought his way to the Swedish throne, and the castle changed hands with him. The men who had held it for the losing side did not get to walk away from the walls they had defended.
A surrendered garrison was killed anyway, seventy-four years before the next one.
1520
A widow held the castle against Denmark
In 1520, Sweden was rising up against Danish rule. The noblewoman Anna Eriksdotter found herself holding Kalmar Castle. Her husband, Johan Månsson Natt och Dag, had died while the rebellion was still underway. She took control of his fiefs and kept the castle against Denmark herself. Command of the fortress passed to her by necessity, not appointment, and she used it to hold the line rather than lose it.
The gate that let one army in had a history of its own.
27 May 1523
Burghers opened the gate before dawn
Three years later, the same walls changed hands by a different method. German mercenaries garrisoned the town for Denmark. They had standing orders: if Conquest of Kalmar came under attack, kill every burgher of Swedish birth, burn it, and retreat to Gotland. Word of the order reached the burghers first. They struck a deal with the besieging Swedish commanders, Arvid Västgöte and Peder Hansson, and left the north gate open in the dark. The attack came before dawn. By morning the city was in Swedish hands. The castle itself held out eight more days before it surrendered too.
1647
Fire pushed the old town off its ground
The ground by the castle did not stay a town much longer. A fire tore through the old town at the castle's edge in 1647. It settled a question already being argued: whether to keep rebuilding on ground that kept flooding, burning, and getting fought over. The town moved instead, wholesale, out to Kvarnholmen. It went up walled and fortified from scratch. What had stood by Kalmar Castle for four centuries was left behind. Nothing of the old streets remains above ground now.
The castle you can see from here has outlasted every side that ever held it.
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Medieval
c. 1180–1200
Kalmar Castle traces its origins to a defensive tower built around 1180, later transformed by the Vasa kings into the Renaissance castle that still guards the town.
On July 2, 1505, King Hans of Denmark-Norway had Kalmar's mayor, city councillors, and leading citizens executed for backing Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder.
On 16 May 1599, 22 men from the Kalmar Castle garrison, including three noblemen and a chaplain, were publicly executed — four beheaded, eighteen hanged.
The Diocese of Kalmar was created in 1603 as a subdivision of Linköping, only merged into Växjö's diocese in 1915, though Kalmar Cathedral kept its rank.
A major fire in 1647 finished off old Kalmar by the castle, and the town was rebuilt from scratch behind new walls on the island of Kvarnholmen, where you are standing.
Twenty-two men from the garrison that had held the castle for King Sigismund III were executed on 16 May 1599, four days after surrendering. Three noblemen and a chaplain were beheaded; the remaining eighteen were hanged.
What was here before the modern town of Kalmar?
The old town stood by Kalmar Castle for roughly four centuries before a fire in 1647 forced its rebuilding, wholesale, on the island of Kvarnholmen, where the town has stood since.
Why were the garrison members executed without trial?
They had held Kalmar Castle for King Sigismund III after his defeat by his uncle Duke Charles at Stångebro in 1598. When the castle surrendered in May 1599, Charles had the garrison's leaders and men put to death rather than tried.
Had anything like this happened at Kalmar before?
Yes. In 1525 a garrison that surrendered Kalmar Castle after a costly siege was killed in a mass execution under Gustav Vasa, and in 1505 King Hans of Denmark had executed Kalmar's mayor and council for backing a Swedish rebellion.
Who was Anna Eriksdotter?
Anna Eriksdotter was a noblewoman who took command of Kalmar Castle in 1520 after her husband, Johan Månsson Natt och Dag, died during Sweden's rebellion against Danish rule, holding the fortress herself against Denmark.
