Göta Canal
waterway in southern Sweden
The Göta Canal (Swedish: Göta kanal) is a Swedish canal constructed in the early 19th century.
The canal is 190 km (120 mi) long, of which 87 km (54 mi) were dug or blasted, with a width varying between 7–14 m (23–46 ft) and a maximum depth of about 3 m (9.8 ft). Traffic is limited to 5 knots in the canal.
The Göta Canal is a part of a waterway 390 km (240 mi) long, linking a number of lakes and rivers to provide a route from Gothenburg (Göteborg) on the west coast to Söderköping on the Baltic Sea via the Trollhätte kanal and Göta älv river, through the large lakes Vänern and Vättern.
This waterway was dubbed as Sweden's Blue Ribbon (Swedish: Sveriges blå band).
Contrary to the popular belief it is not correct to consider this waterway as a sort of greater Göta Canal: the Trollhätte Canal and the Göta Canal are completely separate entities.
History
The idea of a canal across southern Sweden was first put forward as early as 1516, by Hans Brask, the bishop of Linköping. However, it was not until the start of the 19th century that Brask's proposals were put into action by Baltzar von Platen, a German-born former officer in the Swedish Navy. He organised the project and obtained the necessary financial and political backing. His plans attracted the enthusiastic backing of the government and the new king, Charles XIII, who saw the canal as a way of kick-starting the modernisation of Sweden.
The public source identifies “Göta Canal” as waterway in southern Sweden. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Göta, Canal and waterway.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q431863. VIAF identifies the subject as 316736052. The Library of Congress control number is sh85055987. Authority coordinates are 58.498, 16.173. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1516.
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This entry incorporates text from “Göta Canal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.