Stand in the cobbled courtyard and look at this severe red brick building with its stepped gable. This is the oldest preserved building in Gothenburg that was not raised for God. Its Swedish name then was Giötheborgz Tyghuhs, meaning the Gothenburg Arsenal. Take a good look, because you are standing in front of the survivor. It went up as an arsenal and a grain store, a place for cannon and for bread, which tells you exactly what a border city lay awake worrying about. In the dead of a Swedish winter, the king, Karl the Tenth Gustav, summoned the whole parliament here, to this very building, to deal with the Second Northern War that was going badly. The war started when Sweden, the leading military power around the Baltic, attacked Poland-Lithuania and quickly conquered much of the country, alarming its neighbours. Brandenburg, Denmark, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and eventually the Dutch Republic joined against Sweden. Denmark sought to recover lost territory, but Karl marched across the frozen Danish straits and forced it to surrender Scania, Blekinge, and Bohuslän. Dutch intervention stopped Sweden from finishing the war, while Sweden’s resources dwindled. That’s why he returned to Gothenburg and summoned parliament. He needed more resources to continue a war whose outcome was becoming increasingly uncertain. But then the king fell ill. He had ridden out repeatedly in the cold to inspect his troops. Soon, he was breaking down with chills and difficulty breathing. His court physician arrived and misdiagnosed the pneumonia as a digestive complaint, treating it with laxatives, bloodletting, and sneezing powder. The fever seemed to lift. The pneumonia did not. It became sepsis, and the king died in a residence a short walk from this courtyard, aged thirty-seven. Think about what that death meant. Sweden was ringed by enemies who would have loved nothing more than to learn that its king had died and left only a small child as his heir. So the city did something extraordinary. It locked the gates. The news was held back, and the death was kept quiet while the men of state moved fast. And inside this hall, that small child, a boy of just four years old, was proclaimed king. Not crowned, but proclaimed, so that Sweden would not be a kingdom without a king for even a single day. Now, look around the courtyard at the low timber sheds. These are the Kronhusbodarna, and today they are the gentlest possible sequel to that tense night. A watchmaker, a glassblower, a potter, a chocolate maker, and a café now work where soldiers once loaded shot.