Olavinlinna Castle
Interesting facts
- The rocky islet was chosen partly because the fast current through the Kyrönsalmi strait keeps the water around it from freezing in winter.
- Sixteen master masons were brought from Tallinn to lead the work, while local farmers paid their taxes by labouring on the walls and hauling stone and logs.
- Because the Russians claimed the island lay on their side of the border, builders first had to raise wooden defences and work under armed guard.
- Gustav II Adolf, stopping on his way back from campaigns in Poland in 1622, is the only reigning king known to have visited the castle.
- In 1788 a walled water channel was added because besieging sharpshooters could easily pick off the men sent out to fetch water.
- Between 1855 and 1861 the medieval fortress served as a remand prison before its prisoners were moved to a new jail at Käkisalmi.
- Two great fires in 1868 and 1869 destroyed almost all of the castle's original woodwork, leaving the stone shell that was later restored.
- The chapel in the Church Tower has a hagioscope, a small opening through which criminals and the sick could follow services, a rare feature in Finland.
- Rams were kept at the castle, and on the feast of its patron Saint Olaf in late July the garrison sat down to a meal of ram meat.
- A restoration begun in 1961 felled trees planted in the 19th century, because their roots were prising apart the medieval walls.
Why it is worth it
Olavinlinna rises straight out of the water. Its grey stone walls and round towers fill a small rocky island in the Kyrönsalmi strait, where the lakes Haukivesi and Pihlajavesi meet in the heart of the Finnish lake district, so that the fortress seems to float on the current. It is the northernmost medieval stone castle still standing and the best preserved of all the medieval castles of the old Swedish realm.
The nobleman Erik Axelsson Tott founded it in 1475 as Sankt Olofsborg, named after Saint Olaf. Moscow had just swallowed the Novgorod Republic, and the castle was a bold claim on land along a disputed frontier; the maze of lakes around it was itself part of the defence. A letter of 1477 mentions builders invited from abroad, probably from Tallinn. Olofsborg was the first Swedish castle to be given thick round towers able to resist cannon. The three-tower keep was finished in 1485 and the outer walls, with two more towers, by 1495. Later centuries reshaped it: one tower collapsed on a weak foundation, another blew up in 1791, and in the late 18th century the castle was modernised with bastions.
The castle withstood Russian sieges in the wars of the 1490s and 1550s, and a trading town grew up under its walls, receiving its charter as Savonlinna in 1639. It was never taken by assault, but its garrison twice surrendered on terms, in 1714 and in 1743, after which the castle passed to Russia. At its fullest it housed about 200 people in cold, damp rooms. In 1907 the soprano Aino Ackté saw in its courtyard a stage for opera, and the first Savonlinna Opera Festival was held here in 1912; the festival in its present form dates from 1967. Hergé took the castle as an early model for Kropow Castle in the Tintin album King Ottokar's Sceptre.
Getting there
The castle stands about 1.3 km from the centre of Savonlinna. Savonlinna Airport (SVL) is about 9 km away. Savonlinna railway station lies on the line to Parikkala.
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From the encyclopaedia
Olavinlinna, also known as St. Olaf's Castle, is a 15th-century three-tower castle located in Savonlinna, Finland. It is built on an island in the Kyrönsalmi strait that connects the lakes Haukivesi and Pihlajavesi. It is the northernmost medieval stone fortress still standing and also the best preserved of all the medieval castles in the Swedish realm. The castle forms a spectacular stage for the Savonlinna Opera Festival, which was held for the first time in the summer of 1912.
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