Visborg

The first known fortress in the south-west corner of Visby was raised around 1310 by Duke Erik, son of King Magnus Ladulås of Sweden, during his quarrel with his brothers over control of Sweden and Norway. In 1394 the partisans of Albrekt of Mecklenburg seized two towers of Visby's ring wall at that same corner, to control the town and its harbour basin. Four years later forces of the Teutonic Order under Grand Master Konrad von Jungingen took Gotland, destroyed the older Visby fortifications and ended the rule of the Victual Brothers, the pirate company based in the town. The Order's bailiff Johan Tethvitz held those towers through its tenure of 1398 to 1408 and added a new building; in 1408 the Order sold the island to Erik of Pomerania, ruler of the Kalmar Union.

The castle proper is reckoned from 1411. The diary of the Visby Franciscans, the Scriptores rerum svecicarum medii aevi, records that King Erik laid the first foundation stone himself on 1 August that year, and building went on while the Scanian knight Trued Hase was captain of Gotland. Visborg stood on the south-western edge of Visby, guarding the harbour and dominating the town behind it.

Deposed from the thrones of Denmark and Sweden in 1439, Erik withdrew to Visborg and held it as an independent domain, running his Baltic piracy from it. It was fortified well enough to sit out a long siege, and did so in 1448 against the troops of Karl Knutsson. Erik had agreed to hand the castle to Karl Knutsson at Easter 1449 in exchange for Borgholm Castle and Öland for life, but Christian I of Denmark moved faster, offering three Danish castle fiefs and 10,000 gulden a year; when the Danish fleet appeared Erik surrendered Visborg to Christian's appointed castellan, Olof Axelsson (Tott), and took safe passage to Pomerania.

Olof Axelsson held Visborg from 1449 to 1464 and enlarged it; his brothers Filip and Ivar followed. In 1487 Ivar Axelsson gave the castle up to King Hans, who installed the Scanian knight Jens Holgersen Ulfstand as captain, followed by Laurens Schinkel in 1509 and Søren Norby in 1517. Norby kept it until 1525, when it passed to King Frederik, and between 1539 and 1544 the castle was modernised under the direction of Wladislaw Wobisser of Pomerania.

Built as an irregular quadrangle, the castle carried four towers along its south wall, the main entrance in the King's Tower and the keep, Blacken, at its centre. After the Peace of Brömsebro in 1645 Visborg took a Swedish garrison under Åke Hansson Ulfsparre, by which time it was dilapidated, the departing Danes having wrecked much of its interior.

In 1676 a Danish fleet under Niels Juel attacked Visby. The town opened its gates on 1 May and the Danish force began shelling the castle; the Swedish commandant, Mikael Schoultz, capitulated after a few hours. The Danish castellans who followed, Christian Bilefeldt (1676-1678) and Marin Barthold (1678-1679), began a thorough refurbishment.

By the first half of 1679 it was clear that Denmark would have to give Gotland up, and the Treaty of Lund that year returned the island to Sweden, closing the Scanian War of 1675-1679. The order to pull Visborg down probably came from Copenhagen. From July to September the castle was demolished and blasted apart piece by piece as the Danes withdrew.

Once Sweden had Gotland, Governor-General Johan Cedercrantz set up a pair of lime kilns at the ruins, and most of what was left was burnt into lime for building Stockholm Palace and public buildings in Karlskrona. The heavy wall sections remaining at the south-west corner are the Frustugan and the southern castle wall; the rest of the ground was left to decay and grazed by the townspeople's cattle. From the mid-18th century the blocks around present-day Visborgsgatan began to be built over. The fragments above the harbour are entered in Fornminnesregistret as an ancient monument.

The name outlasted the walls. Prince Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Gotland, married Ebba Munck af Fulkila in 1888 without his father's permission and thereby relinquished his right of succession and his royal titles; on 2 February 1892 his mother's brother Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, created him the first Count of Wisborg, with reference to the old fortress of his former dukedom. Three more counts have been made since, all of them former Swedish princes who lost their titles by marrying without the King of Sweden's consent: Sigvard, Carl Johan and Lennart Bernadotte, ennobled in 1951.