Europe's Literary Castles Explored

A 45 minute train journey from Copenhagen, Elsinore (Helsingør), overlooking the Øresund which separates the Danish island Zealand from the south of Sweden, is home to perhaps the most famous setting in Literature: Elsinore Castle- the scene of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The castle itself (Kronborg Slot to give its official title) is nothing to get particularly excited about. As far as bastions of royalty go, it’s mediocre. However, there is a sense of otherness about the place which invites a curious act of role-play on the visitor’s part. Although Shakespeare’s great tragedy was fictional, and any historical source puts like events far before the Renaissance, the setting is so evocative, and the opportunities for dramatic projection so fruitful, that what begins as a trip to a three star castle becomes an unconscious act of imagination, effortless and intriguing.

The castle has become, unwittingly it seems, so alike the Elsinore of Hamlet that it has developed two identities. You can walk the battlements, a freezing wind ravaging your face as you look across the water to Sweden; and although there is a perfectly sound history in these sights, far more tempting is the urge to pace broodingly across the stones in your obsequious garbs of black and feign terror at the approaching ghost of your murdered father.

The royal apartments upstairs, and casements below ground are also viewable. The sleeping quarters of Frederik II immediately become the chamber scene with Hamlet and Gertrude, the murder of Polonius taking place mere feet away; the enormous 62m ballroom could only be the scene of the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes. By the time you walk the length of it, the whole court lie dead at your feet and Horatio is feeling quite uncomfortable among the recently expired. The more humble its interior becomes (often whitewashed walls and floorboards), the greater the sense that the space should by filled by the visitor’s mind; an empty stage for Shakespearean puppetry.

Considering Elsinore alongside other citadels with literary history - Transylvania willingly presents itself- the contrast between the two is evident. The castles of Transylvania are often unparalleled. Peles Castle in Sinaia is a modern marvel, while Sighisora and tourist favourite Bran hold more gothic versions. Each boasts some connection or other to the Vampire daddy, Vlad Tepes and by extension, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. However, they fail to connect the visitor to the vampire myth due to their blatant exhibitionism on the subject. You cannot approach one without being harassed to buy a pair of plastic fangs, plastic vampire mask, or plastic garlic.

Elsinore differs in its relative humility on the Hamlet front. The castle gift shop is mercifully free of skulls, black cloaks and vials of poison and is in fact far more concerned with selling Hans Christian Andersen merchandise. All that is of Hamlet is one introductory room explaining briefly the history of the play, stressing all the while its absolute fiction (something which the Romanian Dracula enthusiasts never do) before moving on graciously to the historical artifacts of the next room. Once a year a special performance of the play is put on at the castle, though sometimes postponed a few hours mid-scene because of bad weather, and this is as far as their showing off is allowed to go. It is, in all, truly refreshing and this allows one to get their own sense of things; their own dramatic bearings, permitting a world of vision to overlay - to a degree inspiring but not consuming – the real place that, though never witnessed by Shakespeare himself, set the scene for his great work.

Elsinore Caslte

Elsinore Castle

Peles Castle

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