Dreams Do Come True! (And don’t read this just before your dinner).

Denmark was a delight, as I have mentioned already & one of the best parts of all- right up there with the Roskilde Church & its rooms full of the one- time living- was the castle at Helsingor (Elsinore).

As learned readers of this blog, you would all be aware that this is the castle where Shakespeare set his play Hamlet. After studying and teaching the play over so many years, I almost had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Here we were, at the actual place where the play had been set all those years ago.

We were lucky enough to be part of a guided tour in English and learnt so much about life in the times of the Danes during the 15/16^th centuries. 

Did you know, that when people came to dinner at the castle in those times, each person was expected to eat 12kgs of food!!!!!  Men & women both! It was thought to be an insult to the hosts if one didn’t oblige and so in order to get on with it, they were provided with feathers to tickle their throats & yes, you’ve guessed it, the guests would off load the last lot before taking on the next course! And they would do this at the table!

And it didn’t end there- at parties for which this particular castle was renowned, the guests would be given 24 kgs of food!  No wonder many of them came to an untimely end. Their toilet arrangements were another subject altogether & one which we won’t dwell on here.

Anyway, the castle itself was amazing and we learnt so much about the Danish way of life and their history. We also heard about Shakespeare and the way he was commissioned to write the play by the Danish king, but these things you know already. 

What you may not know, was that the Danes and the Swedes in those times were bitter enemies and fought long and hard and often for the same bits of turf, with the result that the Swedes still have some of the Danes works of art and beautiful tapestries which they are not returning, except that one apparently magnificent tapestry will be lent to the castle for two years from this September while the museum where it resides in Sweden is refurbished.

This was a seriously scary situation

Same area- amazing what a bit of light can do.
Still don't think I'd want to get married down there, though.

The one tapestry that they didn’t nick was the one that showed the King of Sweden on bended knee in front of the Danish Queen, Margrethe 1^st.  No, he wasn’t proposing, he was handing over his crown to her as a sign of his surrender! 

The labyrinths under the castle were mind boggling, and really quite scary because they just went on & on & one could imagine the terror of prisoners incarcerated there because they would never have found their way out unaided.  It was really claustrophobic.  Thank goodness for arrows on the walls. And to think that today, people pay to get married down there!

So, now, when I read Hamlet, I will be able to think of its setting and that will add an even greater dimension to my enjoyment.  History is so good when it can be learnt in the places it happened.

Elsinore Castle

And so, dearly beloved brethren, here endeth the history lesson for today.