The Swedish capital city and fortress-market center where Charles VIII died in 1470.
Stockholm emerged as Sweden's primary political center in the later medieval period, growing in importance under Birger Jarl in the 1250s and the Folkung dynasty. Its position at the outlet of Lake Mälaren into the Baltic gave it control of key trade routes.
Charles VIII's death in Stockholm in 1470 made the city a focal point of the conflict between Kalmar Union loyalists and Swedish independence advocates in the late fifteenth century. The unresolved tensions around union and Swedish autonomy that defined Stockholm's late medieval political significance set the stage for the turbulent decades that followed.