Karen Andersdatter

Karen Andersdatter (died 1673 in Copenhagen, Denmark) was the Danish mistress of King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway and the mother of one of his three illegitimate but acknowledged children, Hans Ulrik Gyldenløve.

Andersdatter became his mistress and bore him one short-lived daughter, Dorothea Elisabeth Gyldenløve (1613-1615) and a son, Hans Ulrik Gyldenlove (1615-1645).

Andersdatter's former fiancé, in the meantime, married her sister, Anna,[2] and became the Bishop of Oslo two years later and he would hold his position until his death in 1639.

Perhaps, as compensation, she was, for a brief time, on the Board of Directors for the Danish island of Møen (now Møn, then a Royal possession south of Copenhagen, in the Baltic Sea.

A family tradition tells that an eye surgery in 1653 restored her sight after she had been deprived of it for 37 years, but there may be reasons to doubt the reliability of this report.