Location: Kajaani
Founded: 1604
Kajaani Castle (Kajaneborg in Swedish) is located
in Kajaani in Finland. Military fortifications consist of two towers
and an inner courtyard protected by the walls on both sides. Kajaani
Castle was constructed on a small island on the Kajaaninjoki river
in 1604 to protect North- Southern region of the Swedish kingdom
against the Russian armies as well as league of the Hanseatic
cities. The construction of the citadel was carried out under
supervision of Count Per Brahe who served as a Governor General of
Finland in the years of 1637- 40 and again in 1648- 54. Several
embrasures offered cannons a wide area of fire in all directions. It
is no wonder that this formidable citadel served as a seat of a
government as well as a prison. Swedish writer Johannes Messenius
served several years in Kajaani Castle between 1616 and 1635.
During the Great Northern War Russian forces besieged Kajaani Castle
and after 5 weeks the garrison surrounded after they ran out of food
and firewood. The same year in March the Russian troops blew up the
castle. Although the land was returned to the Swedish crown in 1721
the castle was abandoned and never reused for the military purposes.
In the 20th century an island of the castle was connected to the
banks of the river by a bridge for cars and pedestrians.
History
From construction to ruin
Construction work on Kajaani Castle began on the orders of King
Charles IX in 1604. Foundation work began in 1604 and construction
itself in 1605. At the beginning of the 17th century, Charles IX
founded both the city of Oulu and Kajaani Castle in northern
Finland. He thus wanted to strengthen Sweden's position of power in
Kainuu, which the country had gained in the peace of Täyssinä in
1595. In addition, the castle would protect the inhabitants and
settlers from Russian extermination expeditions. When completed, it
was the northernmost stone castle in Europe. At the end of the 20th
century, it was debated whether a castle or other building was
present before the 17th century. On behalf of previous buildings, it
has been argued that the location was strategically significant. No
evidence of previous buildings has been found, and therefore Heikki
Rytkölä, a researcher at the Kainuu Museum, for example, considers
the assumed previous building to be too bold.
The
construction of the castle began on the east side of Lake Oulujärvi
on an island in the Kajaaninjoki rapids. It had to be able to defend
itself against possible siege, and to build it, Charles IX was sent
by the mason Isak Rasmuksenpoja. Construction work progressed slowly
as there was a shortage of labor and building materials in the area.
Gustav II Adolf ordered in 1619 construction work to be suspended.
At this point, the castle made of gray stone was rectangular in
shape and had a semicircular cannon tower at each end.
The
castle remained unfinished and was used as a prison for the first
few decades. It was considered a good prison for deportation, as it
was located in a remote wilderness. The most famous prisoner of the
castle was Johannes Messenius, a professor at Uppsala University,
who was convicted for his connections with the Jesuits and the Pope.
He was a prisoner in Kajaani Castle for almost 20 years, and in 1636
he was transferred to Oulu. During his imprisonment, Messenius wrote
a multi-part historical work, Scondia illustrata.
In 1650,
Count Peter Brahe received the Free Duchy of Kajaani as his
province, and the following year Brahe founded the city of Kajaani
in connection with the castle. Brahe wanted his counties to be run
from representative administrative buildings, so between 1661 and
1666 the castle was converted into a noble castle. During the
construction work, the castle was raised and the wooden residential
buildings were replaced with brick ones. Samuel Lång, the castle
manager, completed the construction work in 1665, when the courtyard
walls were raised to the level of the outer walls. Kajaani Castle
was allowed to remain the seat of the Free Duchy of Kajaani until
1681, when the county was revoked in connection with the reduction.
The castle again became a voud castle, which was also responsible
for the defense of the area.
The Great Northern War broke out
in 1700, and Kajaani and its nearby villages were burned in 1712.
The castle's commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Johan von Meurman, then
began to strengthen the defense. The top floors of the towers were
converted to fit cannons, a three-meter-thick layer of peat was laid
over the walls, door and window openings were covered, and various
obstacles were lowered to the shores. Kajaani Castle was Sweden's
last base in Finland after Olavinlinna was overthrown in 1714. In
March 1715, a Russian force arrived outside Kajaani Castle,
demanding immediate surrender. Johan Henrik Fieandt led about 50
defenders held their ground, and the Russians remained absent for
more than half a year. The Russians returned in December, when
General Czech brought about 4,000 men to the scene. The Russians
besieged the castle for five weeks, and Fieandt agreed to surrender
on February 24, 1716. The Russians had promised to release the
defenders and allow them to preserve their property. However, the
promises were not kept, and the siege takers took everything with
them and sent both soldiers and civilians as prisoners to Turku or
Russia. The castle was blown up by General Czech in March 1716.
From the ruin castle to the restoration site
Kajaani Castle
returned to Sweden in the peace of Uusikaupunki in 1721, and its
reconstruction was considered on several occasions. The castle had a
small garrison until the 1790s, but the walls still fell and its
stones were used to build the stone legs of the houses. When Finland
became part of the Russian Empire in 1809, the castle completely
lost its military significance. However, Linnasaari remained a
significant crossing point for the river, and old wooden bridges
were maintained. A new wooden bridge was built on the ruins in 1845,
which was used for almost a hundred years until the construction of
the concrete bridge. To build the foundations of the wooden bridge,
the central part of the ruin was lowered, and some stones taken from
the site were used for its foundations.
Repairs to the castle ruins were first carried out
in 1890 thanks to an appropriation granted by the Finnish Senate. In
addition, the General Government of Public Buildings, which was the
actual performer of the repairs, used its own funds for the
restoration. The castle had been in ruins for almost two hundred
years at the time, and the base and rooms were covered with a
meter-thick layer of earth and stone. In addition, the walls were in
such poor condition that they were feared to collapse. The
restoration plan was drawn up by the most famous restoration
architect of his time, Johan Jacob Ahrenberg. The castle was poorly
restored in the summers of 1890–1892: collapses were repaired with a
brick wall and the ruins were lowered. The brick patches remained in
place when the ruins were rebuilt in 1910–1911.
The old
wooden bridge became too narrow and in poor condition for the growth
of car traffic in the early 20th century. Construction of a new
reinforced concrete bridge began in the summer of 1936. Objects
found in connection with the excavation of the bridge's foundations
raised the need to rehabilitate the ruins. Parliament therefore
allocated an appropriation for excavation and restoration work,
which began in July 1937. The castle was stripped of soil and stone
several meters thick and its walls were repaired and raised. The
brickwork made in the previous restoration was replaced with gray
stone. Approximately 1,800 finds were recovered during the
excavations. At the initiative of the city of Kajaani, a new
restoration project was carried out in the castle in 2001–2008.
During the project, the National Board of Antiquities renovated the
walls and studied the history of the building and the city built a
footbridge on the island. For the accessibility of the ruins and
tourism, new signs were developed and a restoration report and
website were created.
Architecture
The castle was built of
natural stone mined and collected from the surrounding areas. The
wall stones have a varied appearance, as many types of stone were
suitable for construction. Limestone was probably excavated from
Melalthti in Paltamo for the limestone used for masonry. The outer
walls of the castles were often covered with a thin layer of lime
mortar, and remnants of white liming have survived from Kajaani
Castle. The window recesses, on the other hand, were red.
In
the first phase of construction, completed in 1619, the castle
included two round cannon towers and a single-storey perimeter wall
between them. The castle also had two rectangular radiators and a
gate tower at the north gate. The buildings inside the walls were
wooden. The circumferential wall was about 39 meters long, 9.6
meters high, and 3.6 meters thick. A bridge led to the island from
both the north and the south. The northern bridge was 50 meters and
the southern 91 meters long. The gates were a weak point of the
defense, and firing holes were aimed at them. In front of the gates
were lifting bridges, the structure of which has little information
left.
Wooden living quarters were later replaced by stone
houses. Because vaulted ceilings were desired, four walls were built
into the houses, even though they were attached to a perimeter wall.
The stone houses followed the model of a mating: in the middle of
them was a staircase with access to two rooms. The office building
had two floors and its mezzanine floor was wooden. The upper floors
were accessed along external stairs. The stone walls of the rooms
were whitewashed. The commandant's living room had a brick floor,
and the other rooms probably had a wooden floor. Against the
northern wall of the castle were four rooms, a powder chamber, a
living room, a staircase and a kitchen, under which there was also a
cellar. On the second floor of the eastern tower was, from 1669, the
so-called great hall.
Ground radar soundings and test
excavations
Ior Bock has told in the saga of the Bock family that
there would have been another castle in the past with a crusade
treasure in the well. The story led to ground-based radar soundings
by a private company, in which the observed reflection was
interpreted as referring to a larger metal object at a depth of
about 2.5 meters. Henrik Lilius, Director General of the National
Board of Antiquities, suggested that one possible explanation for
the reflection in the radar image could be an old cannon that would
have remained underground. Later, researchers at the University of
Oulu made similar observations. Archaeologist Kari Uotila excavated
the ground radar site in June 2006 and found an electric cable at a
depth of 40 centimeters, which was probably an object seen on the
radar. According to the excavation, there is no well mentioned by
the sword of the Bock family at the site. The ground layer at the
alleged deep underground metal object is otherwise intact, so
nothing could be hidden in it. In December 2006, researchers at the
University of Oulu no longer found evidence of a large metal object
in their new ground-penetrating radar soundings.
Kajaani Castle in fictional descriptions
In
Zachris Topelius' historical novel, Välskär's stories are twice
ignored in Kajaani Castle and its history. In the first episode of
the novel, one of the protagonists, cavalry Gustav Bertel, meets in
1635 in the castle his beloved Princess Regina von Emmeritz. In the
twists and turns of the plot, you will also meet the castle's most
famous prisoner, the Swedish historian Johannes Messenius, and the
Catholic Jesuit Hieronymus, who is collapsing in his political
conspiracies. In the third episode of the novel, during the Great
Northern War in 1716, Gustav Bertelsköld, a later representative of
the Perttilä / Bertel family, a Caroline wounded in battle,
experiences the siege of the Russians and the surrender of the
castle with his wife. The events also feature real historical
figures, Johan Henrik Fieandt, the castle manager, and Daniel
Cajanus, a strong man born in Paltamo, who has since become famous
throughout Europe, “Long Taneli”.
The siege of the castle and
the distress of the women and children who fled there were described
by the young Eino Leino in his first printed poem Kajaani Castle
(Hämeen Sanomat 26.9.1890). In the poem, pity and a sense of
military duty struggle in the mind of Fieandt, the tough master of
the castle. Also in Ilmari Calamnius' poem Remembering the Past,
Hoping for the Future, the ruins of Kajaani Castle first evoke
warlike images of the past, but the poet announces the construction
of a new kind of castle, where the “idea of light” flies and the
“power of spirit” reigns. The poem uttered at the folk high school
lottery held in Kajaani in 1896 also appeared in print on the
Ostrobothnian branch's Joukahainen album (no. 11, 1897).
Kajaani-based journalist-writer Jussi Kukkonen also played an
important role in some historical novels by Kajaani Castle. The
novel Kainuu returns (1942) is related to the so-called the
expedition of the Russians to the Kajaani region, known as the
Sarcasm War, in 1712. In the novel, the castle serves as a base for
the guerrilla activity of local peasants in an attempt to resist the
invader. The personal gallery also included the infamous Major Simo
Affleck ("Hurtta"). The imprisoned Caroline (1946), who tells the
story of Johan Henrik Fieandt, the chief of Kajaani Castle, and his
family begins with the castle’s defensive battle against a superior
enemy. Daniel Cajanus is also involved in Kukkonen's book as a
novelist, following Fieandt's family to prison and their escape back
to freedom.
In his poem collection Kajaneborg 1636, published
in 2010, the Finnish-Swedish poet Lars Huldén has described the life
and thoughts of the castle's famous prisoners, historian Johannes
Messenius and poet and adventurer Lars Wivalius during their long
and heavy prison years in the 17th century. The fate of Messenius as
a prisoner of the castle has also been discussed by Juha Seppälä in
his play The Prisoner of Kajaani Castle, which premiered at the
Kajaani City Theater in 2001.
Stamps
On July 7, 1951, a
brown stamp worth 20 marks was issued in Finland in honor of the
300th anniversary of the city of Kajaani. In addition to the ruins
of Kajaani Castle, the stamp shows the Koivukoski power plant and
the towers of Kajaani Church (1896) designed by Jac Ahrenberg and
the Kajaani Town Hall (1831) designed by Carl Ludvig Engel.