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Norrkoping grew rich on cloth. By the 17th century the Dutch merchant Louis De Geer had established it as Sweden's second-largest city through textiles and metal-working, and for three centuries the Motala strom river powered an industrial complex that dressed much of Scandinavia. Then cheaper competition arrived from Italy and Japan, and between 1950 and 1970 the factories went from 54 to 10. The mills are still there. They just do different things now.

The industrial riverscape along the Motala strom is one of the most convincingly repurposed in Sweden.

Former weaving sheds house the Museum of Work, one of Sweden's best museums about labor and everyday life, while the surrounding buildings have become apartments, restaurants, and cultural spaces. The area has that particular quality of places where the original bones were solid enough to outlast their purpose. Norrkoping also operates one of only two tram systems still running in Sweden, a fact that gives the city center a pleasantly anachronistic rhythm.