Roslagen

Roslagen is a coastal area in eastern Uppland in Sweden. It constitutes the northern part of the Stockholm archipelago and extends north along the coast. The old designation for the area was Roden. In the Viking Age, Roden was divided into skeppslag ("ship districts"), each responsible for supplying ships and crews when the king issued a call to the leidang, the conscript navy system. Unlike the inland hundreds, Roden lay outside the regular division of the Uppland folklands. It mainly covered the coastal areas of Tiundaland and Attundaland, sometimes reaching into Gästrikland, and in some sources even included islands further south such as Lidingö and Värmdö. Over time, especially from the 1500s onward, the term Roslagen came to be used more generally for the entire Uppland coast and even some inland areas. A person from Roslagen is called a Rospigg, a modernized form of rosbyggiar ("inhabitant of Roden"). The area also gives its name to the endangered domesticated Roslag sheep, which originated from the area centuries ago.