Sweden's 1710 Plague: The Epidemic That Killed a Third of Stockholm

In 1710, as Sweden's armies were being crushed at Poltava, an invisible enemy was already devastating the home front. The bubonic plague arrived in Stockholm via a merchant ship from the Baltic, and within months it had killed roughly a third of the city's population. This episode explores how the Great Northern War and the epidemic fed each other: refugees from the Baltic provinces carried the infection, quarantine measures collapsed under war demands, and the death toll crippled Sweden's ability to recover. We follow the plague's trajectory from the port of Nyköping into Stockholm's overcrowded working-class districts, the desperate measures taken by the city's physicians like Urban Hjärne, and the long-term demographic and economic consequences. We also touch on the controversial 'Mortality Bills' that became Sweden's first real attempt at tracking public health data. This is a story about how war and disease together broke the Swedish Empire's back, long before the final peace treaties were signed.

#SwedishHistory #BubonicPlague #Stockholm1710 #GreatNorthernWar #UrbanHjärne #Epidemiology #Quarantine #Carolean #Poltava #Nyköping #MortalityBills #DemographicCollapse #BalticRefugees #Stormaktstiden #18thCentury #History #FexingoHistory #PandemicHistory

Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo