The real name of Elsinore Castle is Kronborg and it was built centuries after the time of the Danish prince, which Shakespeare uses as a prototype of his tormented, gloomy Hamlet. But there is hardly a better scene for Shakespeare’s grim tragedy than this fortified Nordic icon of secret passages, with its duly gloomy dungeon and cannons protruding above the jagged railings of the towers.
After ten kilometres of dormant fishing villages along the coastal road north of Copenhagen, the huge castle, surrounded by a moat full of water, rises above the town of Helsingør, which grows around it. Filling its huge jewellery boxes with “400 years of legalized piracy”, Helsingør Castle (as it is also called) collected taxes paid to the Danish crown by passing ships until the fees were abolished in 1857. Originally built in 1420 and expanded in 1574, Kronborg had all the decorations of a large royal renaissance residence.
Its brightly furnished Knight’s Hall is one of the largest and oldest in Northern Europe; the luxurious chapel of the castle is still the dream place for wedding ceremonies for many lucky Danish couples. From time to time there are performances of Hamlet in the torchlight in the courtyard, where the audience can watch the ink fog and the tormented prince tormented by the “slingshots and arrows of mad fate.” Meanwhile, somewhere outside in a gloomy and damp cell, the spirit of the Viking leader Holger Danske, a mythical hero from the era of Charlemagne, is locked up – legend has it that while he sleeps, the Kingdom of Denmark is safe.
