Stadsgården 3.01

Stadsgården commonly refers to the wharf on the shore of the Baltic Sea in Stockholm, Sweden, located between Slussen in the west and Masthamnen in the east. The word gård in the name comes from skeppsgård, which was a word used in archaic Swedish for an area used for port and dock operations.HistoryStadsgården originally constituted only the western, broader part of the shore, near to a steep cliff face on Fjällgatan. The name is credited to have first occurred in 1448, in a text mentioning "en tompt vppa sudra malm belegna vidh Stadz garden". At least from the early 14th century, so called "tran boats" or "seal boats" lay fastened to poles on the water around the area. In the boats, seal fat from the Stockholm archipelago and the Bothnian Sea was cooked, and the resulting whale oil from this smelly contraption was packed in cans and sold further. The boats were left until the start of the 17th century.A certain building, containing stables, was prominent in the area. In Stockholm's privilege letter from 1594, proposals to tear down this building to give place for ship construction docks were mentioned:Ship construction on the area was probably started in 1687 when the Södra varvet in Tegelviken was founded. In the Karta öfver S:ta Catharina församling from 1674, a long row of narrow lots towards Saltsjön is visible, but no road connecting them. On the map, Tegelvik remains a bay, bearing the name Skjeps-hwarfwet. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the name Skeppsbron, or Nya Skeppsbron, is also mentioned, relating to Skeppsbron in Gamla stan.