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In 1680 it was decided that Sweden’s principal naval base outside Stockholm should be relocated to the Blekinge archipelago, and that a new town be established there. This particular site was chosen in part because of its nearness to the Swedish provinces on the other side of the Baltic, but also as winters were shorter in Blekinge, it gave the Fleet earlier access to waters free from ice. Work on the fortifications for the new town of Karlskrona began immediately, and the two forts on the islets of Godnatt and Kurrholmen would prove to be the two final representatives of an older type of Swedish military fortification, which would be overtaken by modern developments in artillery. Even before they were completed the two towers known as Godnatt and Kurrholmen, were obsolete, and hark back to the traditional type of keep so cherished in Sweden ever since the Middle Ages. The origins of the Godnatt and Kurrholmen towers are to be found in the deliberations held during the 1850s by a number of government commissions regarding a permanent defensive system for Karlskrona. By this time warships were beginning to be powered by steam, and it was feared that the Drottningskär citadel and the fortifications on Kungsholmen alone were not sufficient to protect the southern fairway. Plans were therefore made for the establishment of an inner ring of defences on six small islets including those of Godnatt and Kurrholmen, some 2 to 3 kilometres from the main naval base. In 1862, when Kurrholmen was being built and Godnatt had been completed, Major General af Kleen sent a memorandum to the General Commandant of the Royal Engineers in which he drew up proposals for the improved defence of Karlskrona. At the same time he also expressed his misgivings regarding the ongoing work on the bases fortifications, for during these years there had been considerable developments in Artillery technology and the combined effect of such innovations as rifled gun barrels and fast ironclad vessels meant that the planned defensive towers were now all too vulnerable to enemy forces. The result of the memorandum was that the Kurrholmen tower only carried a battery on one floor instead of two, and of the six towers planned only two were built.

From www.karlskrona.se

I took this picture from a ferry between Karlskrona and polish city Gdynia.