Kungseken, the king's oak, stands beside an old canal lock at Knappfors, and tradition says two princes met under it to plot against their brother, King Erik XIV. The Swedes who wrote the story down do not believe it. The oak is real enough: photographed here in 1895 and again in the 1940s, and still in full leaf in 2024, its split trunk held together with metal bands. It stands in a meadow by the 1852 lock, inside the Lunnedet nature reserve near Karlskoga. Free to visit.
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Kungseken, Knappfors
Oak (Quercus sp.) · Knappfors, near Lesjöfors/Karlskoga, Värmland
Two princes are supposed to have met under this oak to plot against their own brother, the king, and the Swedes who wrote it down do not believe a word of it. Tradition says Gustav Vasa's sons, the future dukes and kings Johan and Karl, came to the Knappfors lock to conspire against Erik XIV. Both Swedish Wikipedia articles that mention the tree call the story a likely invention. It is a good story all the same, for a tree called Kungseken, the king's oak.
What is certain is that it has been photographed here for a long time: a picture from 1895 is referred to, and the Örebro city archive holds one from the 1940s. A 2024 photograph shows it alive and in full summer leaf, its split lower trunk held together with metal bands, standing inside a wooden fence in a mown meadow beside the old canal lock and the red lock-keeper's house, with a small sign at its foot.
The setting has its own history. Knappfors is a preserved nineteenth-century ironworks site, and the lock, finished in 1852, carried pig iron floated down from the Karlskoga and Nora mining districts. Today it sits inside the Lunnedet nature reserve, about ten kilometres by road from Karlskoga, with camping and beaches nearby.
Nobody has published its age, its girth, or even which oak it is. If you have measured it, tell us.
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