Ropsten is a cape at the eastern part of

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

mainland at the inner part of Stockholm

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Two bridges named

Lidingöbron Lidingöbron () is the name of two existing and three historical bridges across the strait of Lilla Värtan between the mainland Norra Djurgården at Ropsten, at the eastern part of Stockholm, and the island of Lidingö. History First pontoon ...

extend from Ropsten over to the island of

Lidingö Lidingö (), also known in its definite form Lidingön and as Lidingölandet, is an island in the inner Stockholm archipelago, northeast of Stockholm, Sweden. In 2023, the population of the Lidingö urban area on the island was 48,162. It is the ...

. Ropsten area is located between

Hjorthagen Hjorthagen is a district in the northeastern part of central Stockholm, located near Ropsten and Lidingöbron. Since 1997, Hjorthagen has been part of Östermalm, Östermalm district. District Hjorthagen belongs to Östermalm district, it had a ...

and the Stockholm city main port Värtahamnen. Ropsten is the terminal station for the eastern part of Stockholm Metro system and is also the terminal station for Lidingöbanan, the railway for public transportation, covering the area of Lidingö.

History

Ropsten has been the communication center for the traffic between Stockholm and Lidingö since the 13th or 14th century, when the first inhabitants settled on Lidingö and began farming, 200–300 years after the end of the

Viking Age The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

. The name "Ropsten" stems from the fact that in old times, going back to the 13th or 14th century, people used to shout out loud from this area to Lidingö, a distance of about 750 meters, to call for a boat transport over to

, before the first regular rowboat ferry line was introduced and before the first bridge was built. In the old times, the part of the Ropsten area close to the waterfront was named ''Ropudden'' (corresponding to "cape shout"). The large rock or

islet An islet ( ) is generally a small island. Definitions vary, and are not precise, but some suggest that an islet is a very small, often unnamed, island with little or no vegetation to support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/ ...

in the water close to this cape gave the place its name, "the rock at cape shout", ''Ropsten''. The rock itself, however, was probably not used as a place to shout from, as it was surrounded by water (during average sea level conditions) according to old maps from the end of the 17th century, in particular a map from 1696. When there was an extreme low sea levelThe sea level in the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

normally fluctuates between -0.5 meter to +0.5 meter, in extreme case up to one meter, depending on atmospheric tide differences between the Baltic Sea and the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

. When there is high atmospheric pressure in the Baltic area compared to the atmospheric pressure in the North Sea for a longer period, the water is pressed out into the Atlantic Ocean and the water level will sink. it was probably possible to reach the rock by foot, as indicated on the painting by Piere Joseph Trere from 1795. The entire area, named Ropsten, dramatically changed appearance in just a few years when the first bridge between Ropsten and Lidingö and the main port for Stockholm was built in this area from around 1884. Today nothing remains of the old Ropsten as it appears on the painting from 1795.

Image gallery, Ropsten year 1696-2008

Image:Ropsten_1696.jpg, Map from 1696, covering the area around Ropsten.
Map orientation; north facing up. Image:Ropstens_gård_1784.jpg, Map from 1784, covering the area around Ropsten.
Map orientation; north facing up. Image:Ropsten_1874.jpg, Map from 1874, covering the area around Ropsten.
Map orientation; north facing up. Image:Lidingöbanan A.jpg, Lidingöbanan at Ropsten railway station. Image:Ropstenplatformblur.jpg, Metro platform at Ropsten station. Image:Bellman vid Elfvik.jpg, A painting showing Carl Michael Bellman leaving

in a rowboat ferry after a visit to the island in September 1789. The boat is the kind of broad boat normally used for transport of bulky goods, horses and cattle etc. with two rowers.

Footnotes

{{reflist Geography of Stockholm