Karlskrona

[Ares96]

This is a map I'm making for the Map of the Month challenge on alternatehistory.com, covering an alternate universe where Karlskrona, my home city in the south of Sweden, was made the nation's capital shortly after its founding. This may sound like outlandish wish fulfilment based on just that one sentence, but the city was actually founded at the height of the Swedish Empire (with all the megalomaniacal insanity that implies), and it was occasionally spoken of as a future capital - in twenty years it went from nothing whatsoever to the third biggest city in the realm, and if it weren't for the Great Northern War it might have continued growing at a similar pace. So what if it did, and what if the King decided to move there after a particularly bungled naval operation based out of Stockholm? Well, here's a possible development. This map is of the city in 1800, but I'm planning to bring it up to 1980 (the city's 300th anniversary) in stages.