23.07.2011 – 23.07.2011  21 °C

Today was a pretty exciting day for me as today was the day that I was getting out of Copenhagen and going to see Hamlet’s castle. To complete the experience I had made an effort to start reading Hamlet to remind myself of the plot. Interestingly I “get” a lot more of Hamlet this time round than I did when I was studying it for my HSC. There is quite a bit of humour in old Hamlet that I certainly did not understand last time I picked it up.. I think like all of those things when you have to read something for an exam you don’t really pay too much attention- you just focus on the bits you need to .. whereas this time round I could actually enjoy the story for its own sake!

Before I could go see Kronborg, I needed to get out of the hostel and move houses as the hostel was fully booked. Fortunately the rain had eased enough that my walk to the new hotel did not leave me drenched and needing a change of clothes! Anyway after moving in I took off to find Helsingr.

Helsingor is a 40min train ride from Copenhagen and is actually at the northern most tip of the island of Zealand (there are two islands in Denmark and a bit of land that is connected to Germany- the three areas are; Zealand, Funen and Jutland (this is the bit connected to Germany)). The trip itself was fairly uninteresting because it poured rain the whole way making it difficult to see the landscape. What I could see resembled lots of mansions, lots of green paddocks and the ocean (the train line follows the edge of the island). I’m sure on a clear sunny day the trip would be really beautiful.

Arrived in Helsingor and what a quaint little town (even with the rain coming down).. The town has been in place since before the early 1200s and it shows.. Many of the buildings are old stone and wooden houses that are brightly painted with cobble stoned streets. The crowning glory (pun intended!) is of course Kronborg Castle. The castle was first erected in the 1420s and was used to guard the strait between now Sweden and Denmark. The Oresund strait is the only entry point into the Baltic sea so was (and still is) a major shipping lane. The Danish king decided to take advantage of the growing sea trade and decided to tax all ships entering the strait. The tax was based on the value of the cargo entering the strait. The catch was that the king had first right of purchase, so if a captain tried to swindle the king out of his tax then he had the right to purchase the cargo at the value that the captain stipulated. In this way the king was able to keep the merchants honest and received his rightful taxes.

This tax is one of the key reasons that Denmark was once such a powerful and rich nation.

Kronborg itself is probably one of the better castles to go and visit (in my brief castle viewing history it is the best so far). For starters the castle staff let you go into the catacombs under the castle. The campmates (as it is known) is a series of tunnels and wide passages that run under the palace that were used as the palace barracks. Largely Kronborg has first and foremost been a military outpost always to protect the coastline of Zealand, so it stands to reason that they would have to have a large area in which to house the troops. Personally I would not have liked to have been housed in the campmates. The area is almost pitch black (and would have been without any form of torch). The walls are constantly dripping with water (well maybe that is only because it has rained continuously for days..), the roof is quite low in lots of places and of course the ground is cobblestones.. not the finest mattress in the world. Apparently the Kronborg garrison was a conscripted garrison. The story goes that when Kronborg was in need of more soldiers the captains would go out into the surrounding areas of Helsingr and “conscript” men into the army. This was done by getting them roaring drunk and then the soldier waking up back in Kronborg in the campmates.. Once in Kronborg the only way out was to serve your time (7 yrs) or to be killed.. Nice huh?

The castle itself is really quite a fine example. Many of the interior furnishings no longer exist (Kronborg was only used as the king’s castle until 1750 or so, after this time it was just a military base) but the actual façade and interiors of the building are just awesome.

Kronborg also allows you to climb to the battlements- so I was able to pretend to be Hamlet talking to the ghost up on the battlements of the castle! Well sort of, I was the only one up there (it was raining and quite windy) so I had to contend myself with talking to myself and pretending the wind was the ghost!! From the battlements I finished up Kronborg by walking into the chapel and seeing the beautiful 16th century organ and pulpit.

Really awesome day! To finish the story we were told that Hamlet is actually based on a Danish story about a Danish prince by the name of Amlet. His father was apparently killed, his mother remarried her brother-in-law (Amlet’s uncle)- Amlet went mad, killed everyone and then killed himself… Sound familiar? It is likely that Shakespeare never actually visited Kronborg but wrote the story based on stories of the court and the ‘Amlet’ story told to him by some of his actors (who did conduct some of his plays at Kronborg to the royal court).