This above all: to thine own self be true. To be or not to be was just too obvious for me to use.
It had always been my plan to visit Helsingør so that I could go to Kronborg Castle, otherwise known as Elsinore in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and hence why this post is likely to be littered with quotations from said play.
I got to the station and saw the next train to Helsingør left in 4 minutes. In that time I managed to buy myself a ticket at the automated machine, run to platform one and dive into the nearest carriage which happened to be the quiet carriage, so I put my iPod on and listened to my music on the way to this coastal town. When I arrived in Helsingør my mobile bleeped and said “welcome to Sweden” because this is the town where the bridge is that links Denmark to Malmo. That was for another day, I didn’t have time to hop across the bridge to Sweden and do Malmo justice.
I’d read that you could see the castle from the station so you couldn’t get lost and the only thing you had to do was follow the signs for Kronborg Slot (I visit so many castles I probably know the word “castle” in more languages than any other word). And there it was, ahead in the distance. It’s right by the sea and has a double moat as fortification, so it is quite a sight. I have to say that looking at the castle from the outside I couldn’t see why Shakespeare had chosen Kronborg for Hamlet’s castle, but I did some further research and got to the bottom of it.
It was a pleasant walk to the castle, but it was very cold, I was regretting not putting my thermals on. I even put my hood up to keep a bit warmer. While walking along the waterfront, I also passed an unusual sculpture of a fish made of various plastic items.
When you get to the first moat the castle does look quite impressive, but I still wasn’t seeing it as Hamlet’s castle. However, as Polonius says “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”. I walked up to the drawbridge, crossed the first moat and I was in the barracks area of the castle. As it was off-season, most of the shops and galleries in the barracks were closed, so I headed straight to the castle. You get to see almost the whole interior of the castle, so it is worth going inside. There was a free tour later, so I had time to look around some of the castle before that started.
The first lot of rooms I looked at were the tapestry rooms. The first ones were actually rather gloomy, that’s when I got why Shakespeare had set Hamlet here. Now it made sense, this gloomy interior was definitely a good setting for Hamlet. I didn’t think Shakespeare travelled to Denmark though and so he wouldn’t have seen either the exterior of the castle or the rooms and it actually was only constructed about 20 years before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, it wasn’t a couple of hundred years old by then or anything. And in fact, as I suspected, Shakespeare never did travel to Denmark, however, troupes of actors travelled around Europe and one in particular, Will Kempe gave Shakespeare a lot of information about the castle. And as was often the case with Shakespeare’s plays, he didn’t write the original story, he took an older story and adapted it, the original story of Hamlet was set in Denmark, so Shakespeare needed a castle to set it in. Will Kempe probably told him all about Kronborg in the town of Helsingør, hence the name Elsinore Castle in the play and that’s why Hamlet is set in Kronborg Castle. But the gloomy rooms, definitely a good choice for Hamlet’s castle.
Some of the tapestries were quite nice, but the best ones were reserved for the last room which were tapestries of Danish kings, each one had a write up about the particular king.
The one I found most interesting was Oluf, although it isn’t him who should have been displayed in the tapestry, it was his mother, Margrete. She was guardian to Oluf when her husband, the king, died and ruled Denmark and Norway on his behalf. Oluf died before he was old enough to rule, so Margrete carried on ruling albeit under the name of a young relative, but she was the one who made all the decisions. The King of Sweden decided she wouldn’t be able to withstand an attack, so he tried to invade Denmark and Norway, but was defeated, so then Margrete was ruling Sweden as well! There were tapestries of this extraordinary woman produced, but they didn’t survive.
After the tapestry room you come out into a huge ballroom and then it was time for the tour of the casemates of the castle.
The casemates are underground passages, not dungeons as such, they were the accommodation for the soldiers unlucky enough to be conscripted into the Danish army or men who were poor and needed to earn money as soldiers. The conditions were awful, more of them died of diseases than during any conflicts with Sweden. They had a diet of salted herring and salted pork and got 8 litres of beer a day to drink. Yes, I think the only way I could survive living in a dungeon would be if I was permanently drunk.
Also in the underground passage was the giant Viking figure of Holgor Danske, the sleeping giant who is supposed to wake up if any invaders arrive and save the castle. Unfortunately he was still dozing when the Swedish decided to invade in the 17th century and they kept hold of the castle for a couple of years.
I had a look in the chapel and the king and queen’s apartments. Frederick and Sophie were apparently very happily married, although it is a story that I find keeps repeating itself in history. After winning lots of wars, at the age of 38, Frederick needed to get married. He should have married Sophie’s older sister, but decided he wanted to marry Sophie instead. She was only 14! But the reports are it was a happy marriage and they had 7 children.
Finally, leave the best until last, one of my favourite pastimes in castles and churches, running up the steps to the top of the tower. In this case it was 145 steps to the top of the Canon Tower with views over the castle courtyard, it was built as a rectangular castle, buildings on 4 sides with a courtyard in the middle. You can also see a long way out to sea from up there and out to Sweden as well.
On my walk back to the station I went past the cannons and then onto the sea wall path, it said it would take 10 minutes longer, but why take the short path when there’s a long one instead! It was a lovely walk, even if it was still cold. Although as I was leaving, the sun came out. Typical.
I visited Denmark in mid March 2017.
Kronborg Castle is in the town of Helsingør a 20 minute train ride from Copenhagen and over the bridge from Malmo in Sweden.
Trains to Helsingør are every 20 minutes from Copenhagen Central Station and the journey time is 20 minutes. Tickets are available at the station at automated ticket machines.
I travelled to Copenhagen with SAS from Manchester.
I stayed in Wake Up Copenhagen on Borgergade in the heart of the city.
Copenhagen Central Station was about a 20 minute walk from my hotel in the city centre. Wake Up Copenhagen is a budget hotel, one of these minimalist places where they think all the guests staying there are blind. That’s the only reason I can think of to have the room numbers painted in giant figures at the side of each door in bright green… It was clean and comfortable, the bed was a decent size, the ensuite was more a glass enclosure in the middle of the room, the shower was very clearly visible from the bed with not quite enough frosted glass, but since I was in the room on my own, it didn’t matter. If you want a hotel in the city centre that isn’t a complete fleapit, this is what you’ll usually be faced with for under £100 a night in Denmark. It was absolutely fine for me.