Jordan’s Chamber

Jordan’s Chamber is located on the top floor of the staircase tower that was commissioned by Duke John and built to replace the drawbridge in 1558. The space above the double staircase was named after the nobleman Carl Jordan who was imprisoned in the room in the 1650s. 

As a young nobleman, Jordan left to serve in the military in Germany, where he married a daughter of a German clergyman in 1651. The married couple had two children. After some time, however, Jordan returned to Finland without his family. He later claimed that his wife had died, and he remarried in 1655. It was then revealed that his first wife had, in fact, not died. Therefore, Jordan was prosecuted for bigamy and imprisoned in Turku Castle the following year. He sent the King several petitions for a pardon, insisting that it was a misunderstanding. Regardless of this pleading, Jordan was sentenced to death after five years of pre-trial detention, and he was executed in Turku on April the 16^th, 1662.