page_title: Stockholm during the early Vasa era
section_title: Hereditary bastion
hierarchical_section_title: Stockholm during the early Vasa era / Hereditary bastion
caption_attribution_description: Johan III:s bisättning i Stockholm.
context_page_description: Stockholm during the early Vasa era is a period in the history of Stockholm when Gustav Vasa and his sons, Eric, John, John's son Sigismund, and finally Gustav's youngest son Charles, ruled Sweden from the Stockholm Palace.
context_section_description: When Eric XIV, the son of Gustav Vasa, was crowned king in 1561, the title had been made hereditary and the kingdom was now financed not by income from royal properties and privileges, but by taxes.  Furthermore, at this time the extent of the kingdom, because of the guarded foreign politics of Gustav Vasa largely unchanged during his rule, started to grow as the disintegrating Teutonic Order left the Baltic exposed to new ambitious powers, and Reval, as a consequence, asked for Swedish protection against Russia and Poland and became a Swedish dominion.  Though Sweden could hardly present the level of government and bureaucracy prerequisite to have a capital in the modern sense, Stockholm was the kingdom's strongest bastion and the king's main residence.  As Eric XIV's pretensions were in pair with those of Renaissance princes on the continent, he afforded himself a court the size his finance could possibly support, and the royal castle was thus the biggest employer in the city, more so when the king was present in person.  In connection to his crowning in 1561, his taste for luxury caused the Crown to consume between two third and three quarter of the city's import.
caption: Funeral of John III. Image from the 19th century showing the courtyard of the Stockholm Castle.
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