Day 11--Elsinore Castle and a bit of Sweden

Today we made our way up the coast of Denmark to the moated Helsingor Castle, which was built in the late Renaissance by a king who wanted to tax all the ships going through the Oresund, the narrow sound between Denmark and Sweden.  Back in the 1500s the Danish king owned Sweden too, so it was no problem. This practice put gold in the Danish kings' pockets until the 1850s, when one American ship refused to pay. That broke the whole system!



This castle was very satisfying, and we had neat tours of the damp and low-ceilinged casemates, or where-to-hide-from-Napoleonic-canon tunnels, as well as the Renaissance wing of the royal residence.

The name Helsingor sounds an awful lot like Elsinore from Shakespear's Hamlet, and he did set the play here. That was sort of like setting a play about George Washington in the DC White House (which wasn't built yet), because the original Hamlet myth comes from another part of Denmark and several centuries before this castle popped up. They have record of two London actors giving entertainment at 'Elsinore' a few decades before the same guys worked with Shakespeare, so they imagine he learned about this big fancy castle from them and figured it was older than it really was. 

We took a short ferry across to Sweden, along with a large group of Swedes who had come over for the cheaper liquor in Denmark. That is about the only deal in Denmark.








The Swedish countryside looks more like rural PA than Denmark's farmland, but the cows are all greyish white. We got off the train at Malmø, which was a special thrill because it sometimes features in the nordic noir (Scandinavian crime fiction) I like to read. 







We walked around this city, saw it's extremely ugly fortress, and sat down for a fish dinner, complete with herring. 

We have enjoyed finding swans in many moats and ponds in this part of the world.

And since it is my husband's birthday, I wanted to send him a special thanks and happy birthday wish from Denmark!