It is good to have a forest walk, while the snowless season still lasts. And so I did have a walk towards a few boggy, dreary forest lakes in Kangasala, east of the city of Tampere.
Some basic woods, with some clear-cut areas and forest roads; it is not clear why they bothered to build a fairly substantial pedestrial bridge over Tampere-Jyväskylä road (Road 9) just for this trail alone. The trail towards Norojärvet and Joutsenenpesä lakes is a part of Kaarinanpolku (Kaarina Trail) hiking route.
Who is Kaarina? That is the interesting part. Kaarina Maununtytär, outside Finland usually known as Karin or Katarina Månsdotter, is the most famous inhabitant of Kangasala in its history: the widow of Swedish King Eric XIV. Eric XIV ruled in 1560-1569, the eldest son of King Gustav Vasa, the architect of the Swedish state. Eric was a talented but ill-tempered man, predisposed to paranoia and later on to outright psychosis fits.
Already in 1562 he imprisoned his brother John, who had previously ruled over Finland from the Turku castle (he is still popularly known in Finland as Juhana the Duke, Juhana-herttua). Eric mistrusted his courtiers, replacing many nobles in his court with lowborn people, and in 1567 actually stabbed a few nobles to death.
The last drop for the nobles was his very marriage to Karin Månsdotter, a Finnish commoner, a daughter of a soldier and a peasant woman. Karin was a queen for only 87 days, after which Eric was deposed in a coup.
The throne passed to Juhana the Duke, now King John III. Eric and Karin were held in Turku castle and various castles of Sweden proper, for the most part actually in rather good conditions. A few years later they were split apart, and later on their only son Gustav was taken away from Karin.
Eric the mad king died in 1577, most likely poisoned. And after that John III freed Karin and granted to her and her daughter Sigrid the crown manor of Liuksiala in Kangasala in Finland. Karin lived in Liuksiala 35 years, up until her death. The manor prospered under her rule, and the local Finns loved her and called her "our queen". Sigrid married a noble from the Tott house, and Liuksiala eventually passed to them. The manor exists to this day (although there aren't any buildings preserved from Karin's times of course) and is currently owned by Meurman family. And relatively recently Karin's name was given to this 60 km long hiking route in Kangasala. Not the best hiking route in truth; on the boring side and non-circular.
