Arms

In my attempts to present you new angles from the old theatre of Kalmar, I choose the city arms, placed in the centre above the stage curtains. My work place today was the second balcony, situated about the same hight opposite the arms.

The theatre itself is, as I've written here before, from 1863, built as a meeting place and a status building to show that Kalmar was an important place. It was drawn by the architect Carl Malmberg. By the time it was built Kalmar only had 8000 inhabitants ("whereof many was children", as it says in a document from the time). Several other large buildings are from the same time.

When I got home I had to look up the city arms and learned that it is actually Swedens oldest known city arms (or city weapon), first found on a seal on a document dating from 1247, which shows that Kalmar had a city arms already by then. In 1346, the king proclaimed that all cities in Sweden had to have a city arms.