But though situated at a central point on Lake Malar, it was destroyed, apparently before the beginning of the nth century (exactly when or by whom is uncertain); and it never recovered.
Sigtuna, lying on the shore of a far-reaching northern arm of Lake Malar, also a royal residence and the seat of the first mint in Sweden, where English workmen were employed by King Olaf at the beginning of the 11th century, was destroyed in the 12th century.
Lake Vetter drains eastward by the Motala to the Baltic, Lake Malar drains in the same direction by a short channel at Stockholm, the normal fall of which is so slight that the stream is sometimes reversed.
At this epoch the North Sea and the Baltic were connected along the line of Vener, Vetter, Hjelmar and Malar.
Their original territories lay on both sides of the Malar, in the provinces later known as Upland, Sodermanland and Westmanland.
