Listen in your podcast app
Listen in your podcast app
S1. E1.
Party at the newly built Kronborg
Kronborg was built by King Frederik II as a fortress and a magnificent castle that could serve as both a sanctuary and party venue for the king and his beloved Queen Sophie. The preserved sources tell of the castle's everyday and festive life, so we can join in when Frederik II had official guests from England and made the famous cannon toasts, where the castle's heavy artillery was fired every time the Danish king raised his glass and made a toast. We can pay a damp visit to the wine cellar or sneak into the king's private gazebos and through his secret passage from the castle into the deep casemates.
S1. E1. party at the newly built Kronborg
19.OCT.2020Meet your host, Nanna Winther
Nanna Winther is a journalist and has hosted a number of history podcasts. In this episode, she joins forces with senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, Poul Grinder, and explores the secrets of Kronborg.
Photographer: Karina Tenberg
Among other things, you can meet
Poul GrinderSenior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark
+45 41 20 61 15About Poul GrinderPoul Grinder
- Poul Grinder
Senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark
+45 41 20 61 15About Poul GrinderPoul Grinder
Transcription
Episode 1 - Party at the newly built Kronborg
You probably know Kronborg. The grand old castle located near Elsinore. It's Hamlet's Castle and is where Shakespeare set his most famous play. It's where Holger Danske sits in the basement and naps while supposedly looking after Denmark.
But it's not really Hamlet's, and Holger Danske is both a mythical legendary figure and a statue.
In reality, Kronborg was the castle of Danish kings and queens, used to instill fear and impress.
Parties were held here that were talked about all over Europe. The castle was besieged, it burned down.
It becomes the setting for blatantly provocative infidelity, captivity, betrayal and theft.
In this podcast, we tackle the real stories that actually took place at Kronborg Castle. Join narrator Nanna Winther and senior researcher Poul Grinder[1] Hansen on a trip to Kronborg. A trip where they lock themselves in the tower room. Going down into the casemates, jumping around in the queen's bedroom, all while telling stories that took place right here in these rooms at Kronborg.
In the first episode, we'll hear about a party at the newly built castle So now we're standing in a corner tower at Kronborg in this beautiful vaulted room from the 1580s with windows to three corners of the world. So when you stand in here, you can look in towards Elsinore, and you can look up the Øresund and down the Øresund when you see the view towards Copenhagen. An amazing room built by King Frederik II, which is a bit of a private retreat in this splendid and presentable royal palace. But what can this room do that the others can't? I really like this room and the similar rooms above and below in this carnate tower, as it's called. I like them so much because you get into the private sphere. Away from the large representative rooms that such a castle of course also contains. And then a room that the king could use for small private, cozy gatherings and just maybe to be himself.
He could sit and work in his lathe, which is a device that you can sit and grind wood to make drinking vessels afterwards, and then it's also a hobby.
These were the kinds of things the king could do in a small room like this, and then you could also, if you wanted to talk to someone privately... He could invite them up here. In the lower rooms here in the tower, there is a large kitchen-like fireplace. You could heat some food and so on, and then it could be carried up and they could sit there by themselves without waiters or anything like that, just one-on-one, so you can make arrangements.
Yes, because this section? We can say that. It's going to be about why they built the castle in the first place, what kind of wild parties they've held here. And then you could say we've chosen this room. It's a bit strange when we talk about those parties, but you also need to retreat, and this could be where some of these kitchen parties were held. Just like nowadays, when you're at some cool party and the nicest place to be is in the kitchen. Yes, and this is just such a kitchen party, and you can call it that.
When you'd gone and been representative, and sat and looked great in the big dance hall at the castle, dancing around, you could just go and pull someone by the sleeve and say: "Hey, why don't we go up here in the tower? Then we know that I have some extra good wine that I've just brought up from the cellar under the castle and just taste it. And I've also just got a really exciting gun that needs some nice pictures, I'll show it to you. Then you could disappear up here in private and have a chance to talk to each other in a different way.
Let's go back to the beginning with Frederick II. Who is he and why is he having this castle built? We thought we'd better get that out of the way first.
Well, we can do that, because he was of course a Danish king born in 1534, the son of a duke down in Schleswig-Holstein. So you can't be entirely sure whether his father actually wanted to become King of Denmark. But that's exactly what he became. His name was Christian the Third, and Frederik grew up as the son of the Danish royal couple and had all sorts of privileges etc. He was fine, but he also had some problems because when he started going to school, they thought he was incredibly bad at reading and writing. These letters didn't really work for him, and they didn't understand that at all at the time. No one knew that there was such a thing as dyslexia. So he didn't have much fun at school, because he got his ass kicked when the teacher thought: lazy boys. You can't do it either, now you're switching the letters around again. But no one understood that, he himself didn't understand what was wrong. So the academic subjects were perhaps not the most successful. But then you have to compensate in other ways and therefore be able to unfold in all the other fields as a rider, as a swordsman and everything you needed to know when you were trained as a king.
This idea that the boy might not be very bright because he couldn't read and write very well was in his parents' minds, so it was actually a relief for him when he was allowed to travel as a young man to Germany, where he met some relatives down in Saxony and went to all sorts of big gatherings for European princes. And it turned out that he did quite well. He actually had the ability to talk to people and make good personal connections that would come in handy later on. When he returned to Denmark, it was with new self-confidence and the experience of: Well, I can actually do this well. It was good that he had made it. Shortly after his father died, he became King of Denmark. And it was also unexpectedly early, so he never had time to get married. So I was a bachelor on the Danish throne. And of course, for political reasons, they tried to find someone he could marry and stuff like that. It was something you had to be happy about. But now I was just the small but in Frederik's case, he had fallen in love with an orphaned Danish noblewoman, Anne Hardenberg.
And it was no one but himself who thought it was a good idea, because all the Danish nobles thought: Why should Hardenberg suddenly become related to the royal family? And the royal family said: It's simply a waste of a good royal wedding to marry such a completely insignificant Danish noblewoman. You should marry a duchess or a princess or something, so you can get some good political connections. So it didn't go very well, but he continued for many years to have this dream of marrying Anne Hardenberg. It lasted so long that there was a lot of intrigue and maneuvering behind the scenes to get him to give her up and find a proper spouse. And he succeeded in the end, as far as I can remember. But that wasn't the only thing he was doing - he wasn't staring at Anne Hardenberg. He was, of course, the king and was involved in a seven-year war against Sweden in the 1560s, which finally ended in 1570. At that point in the long war, the king had had enough of all that warfare, so we had to focus on other areas where we could make Denmark a great and recognized state. And one of the ways we could do that was by supporting art and science, such as supporting the Danish astronomer and scientist Tycho Brahe and making the island of Hven available to him in the Sound. We can almost see it, because we are standing.
And what people need to understand is that we are how many meters above the ground?
Yes, we are high up in the sky, in a tower. Maybe we can't see Hven from this tower, but you can from other windows in the castle. In fact, that's how it is, the king himself said when he handed over Hven to Tycho Brahe, when he had a meeting with Tycho Brahe and said: "The other day, when I stood up in the new castle I'm building here in Elsinore, I saw the little island out in the Sound, so I thought there was something about you once saying it would be a good place to build an observatory. So now I want to offer you that I will hand over this island to you. This is where Kronborg comes into the picture. He stands on Kronborg and looks out over the strait. And then he had the bright idea of getting Tycho Brahe to be there. So he supported the scientist Tycho Brahe, and he also supported artists of various kinds, who of course worked for the king. One of the ways you could support art and things like that was by building something beautiful, and that's where Kronborg comes into the picture, because Frederik II decided in 1574 that it should become a fantastic Renaissance castle.
There was an old castle already there, and people were also recycling-conscious back then, so you didn't just tear down the old castle. Instead, they built the new castle by sticking it on top of the old one and filling in between the existing buildings. So you got a big, beautiful Renaissance castle, which is still here today, and which we are standing in. But if you walk around inside Kronborg, you can see here and there remnants of the old medieval civic complex that was here before.
But why would he build it? One is to support the arts, but that can't be the only thing. There's also the military part of it, and then there's also this thing with the brackets.
A castle like Kronborg had to be both a strong fortress and a stunningly beautiful castle that could impress everyone who came to visit. The fortress is not least due to the fact that it is located where it is. That is, with the Øresund just outside, because this is where the Øresund toll was levied. This meant that all ships that sailed past had to pay the Danish king to be allowed to sail past, and all the money went directly into the Danish king's pockets. It was a good business like no other. When Frederik II built Kronborg Castle here, he said that it cost Denmark nothing at all.
I paid for everything myself, but he could easily say that because he got all the money from Øresundstolden.
So it wasn't like that, I don't know if they called it "the state" at that time. But it was for the king personally, the customs. Yes, the customs went directly into the king's own pockets, and I paid it, because thousands of ships came by every year, and they all paid, which made the Danish king a very, very wealthy prince. That's why they could afford to build such a magnificent castle complex like Kronborg.
How long will it take to build this?
It took about 11 years. But that's also due to the fact that he changed his mind during the construction of the castle. Because he started by building it a little lower than it is today, using red bricks with white stripes. And when he had built it and it was more or less finished, which took no more than 3-4 years, he regretted it a bit and thought, "It looks too much like the manor houses that nobles have around Denmark. They are also red with white stripes and some gables and such. We need something that says that this is royal, that this is something on a higher level, and so he decided that the whole thing should be clad in sandstone like a white castle, as it is today. And then all the wings were raised by one floor, as extra spires and towers and everything like that were added, including the tower we're standing in today. He used to have a lower tower with his light house, but now it was all built even bigger and even more beautiful. And that's what was completed in 1585.
Now it's finished, so will he have his queen there when it's finished, or is that when she comes into the picture?
I mentioned Anne Hardenberg before, whom he was in love with. But when we come up after the wars against Sweden in 1571 or thereabouts, he has no choice but to realize that it's never going to work out with Anne, and so he bows down and says Well, then we'll just have to find someone I can get married to. And then you present the king with a few different options. There was a princess from Prussia, and she was coming to Denmark to visit so the king could see her in person.
He had probably gotten a painting of her to see if she looked reasonably nice. That's what he always wanted, Frederick II, you just wanted to be able to see the one he was going to marry. There was actually a letter he had written to one of his commanders, a German called Günter, who had said something to the king about why he wanted such pictures of those he was going to marry. And then Frederick II replies to Günter: If I intended to keep my marriage the way you do, it wouldn't matter what she looked like. But of course he also thought that he wanted someone he liked. He wanted to check her out and see what it was really like. Well, there was the princess of Prussia, she was the one he needed to look at.
It didn't quite live up to the painting obviously, but instead of that,
It's like Tinder today, where people have a profile picture like that.
It was like a profile picture, only painted by a skilled painter, which had to be sent in advance. But in the middle of this meeting, there were also others, some family from Meklenborg in northern Germany, including his 14-year-old cousin Sofie, because Sofie's mother was the sister of Frederik's father.
So it was a bit of a Danish connection. That's why she was there, so the family could come up and visit at the same time. And then there was also something that said bang or whatever it said. In any case, he became wildly infatuated with Sofie. And now that her parents were also there, it was easy to arrange to be betrothed right away and make some arrangements, so everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The king had finally found a worthy duke's daughter, and even a bit of family. It was very good. And then there's his marriage to Sophie, and his semi-dangerous scruples towards his former girlfriend Anne Hardenberg. He doesn't think he can get married until he has come clean with Anne Hardenberg. He wanted to meet Anna and explain the situation, but the others didn't want that. Now it was going to be about Sofie. But then it was Sofie's mother who actually met with Anne Hardenberg and talked to her. But we can tell from some letters that it was because things were going well. And in fact, something Anne Hardenberg wrote to one of her friends reveals that she hadn't felt so light-hearted for many years, so she probably felt that the royal attention had been a bit of a burden for all those years.
She finally got rid of him!
She may have been able to see better than the king that this was never going to happen. And then, of course, it was arranged that she would also get married. Hardenberg got a rich nobleman. She may have had a secret boyfriend for a long time.
Of course, it's not certain that she did, because you can't know. But she probably didn't. But it has been an increasingly deadlocked and impossible situation with the king.
But then he married his 14-year-old cousin Sofie, and you'd think things would never work out. But it turned out that he was 38 years old when they got married. In our eyes, this is simply grounds for separation here at the asylum center. But that's not how it turned out. In fact, he became extremely fond of Sofie, as he always called her, and we get the impression that she became fond of him too, so they were quite close in their marriage.
Until the king died in 1588.
Okay, in '88. But he was still able to throw some wild parties? That's the queen, Sofie, throwing some wild parties.
In fact, he was so fond of Sofie that when he built Kronborg here, he first thought of calling it Sofienborg, named after her, because he thought a lot about building it for her. She's going to have a really good time here and really enjoy herself. Of course, we'll both be happy here at Kronborg or Sofienborg. Then he regretted when he had chosen to write that he had intended to call Sofienborg.
Then he thought, no, we have to call it something a little more representative, like maybe through the ages, where people will wonder why it's actually called Sofienborg... So it became Kronborg and he emphasized that now people could no longer call it Krogen, as the old medieval castle had been called. Now it should be called Kronborg. If anyone dared to call it Krogen anyway, they would have to pay a fine of a good ox for using the wrong name,
It was a proper stall, and he couldn't live up to it either, because 14 days after he had decided it should be called Kronborg, he dictated some letter saying that some building materials should be put on the hook. So he ended up calling it the old name, he hadn't gotten used to it, which just shows how fond he was of Sophie, and this castle was also intended to be a setting that would be presentable and a good place to be for both of them, both in parties and in private, which is why it was furnished with huge, beautiful banquet rooms where guests from abroad and from Denmark could gather for parties and gatherings of that kind. And the most grandiose room was the dance hall that can still be seen in the castle, which is 62 meters long. A huge room that is a very large banquet hall.
But that's what it would be like when there were a lot of guests here, and then you can sit and eat there. And then there would be actors, jugglers, musicians, undoubtedly musicians all the time. We think there used to be a balcony where the musicians sat on pillars and went up under the ceiling, where they sat and played. And then around the walls. There were tapestries with pictures of all the Danish kings throughout history, and that is, when the history goes all the way back to the legendary king Dan, who of course gave his name to Denmark, and then lots of kings that you could read about in the old medieval writer Saxo. And then up to Frederik II himself, so there were 100 kings in total that filled all the walls. When you came as a foreigner visiting the castle, it seemed overwhelming to enter the room and see king after king after king after king, so down at the end was the picture of Frederick II himself. Perhaps he was standing there in real life with Sofie to receive him. You felt sufficiently awed, thinking, we have indeed come to an old and powerful kingdom. So they were hung up when there was a fancy party, for example at the castle and surrounded by them when you ate. When you put on such performances, and when you danced afterwards, because it was called the dance hall, the musicians played the kind of dance that was danced back then.
There was also some quadrille dancing, where you danced several together and formed different formations. So a bit like the people who know all Lancier. It's a bit similar to that. Of course, it's a completely different kind of music, but it's something where you bow and dance around the opposite side and back again. There are also intricate dances of different kinds, which of course you could do. It was part of the general upbringing that you had to dance that way. And during the meal and during the dancing and so on, there's a lot of drinking, because that was part of Danish party culture back then. And funnily enough, it still is today. Even in the Middle Ages, Danes were notorious for drinking a lot. This was also the case in the Renaissance, when you could drink a lot, and it was actually a bit of an ideal for a real king of Denmark, and Frederik the 2nd lived up to it, that you should be able to drink a lot. Throughout the evening, preferably drinking everyone else under the table. And then the next morning at four in the morning, you'd jump out of bed, get on your horse and go hunting or whatever you were doing. Nothing to do with having a hangover.
The true king, he could do it all.
So it was a very telling episode told by a Danish nobleman called Sigurd Gruppe, it was in 1588, traveling in Europe. He was in Vienna, in Austria at least, and was sitting in an Austrian tavern with someone he had met there. An Austrian nobleman was, of course, drinking at an Austrian tavern in Austria.
Then the Austrian said that he learned how to drink from the Danish King Frederik II, who visited Denmark because he knew how to handle such cups. But then the interesting thing is that he said: "I would die for a king like that," he says. It shows that this is the ideal. He's a man, and that's the kind of king you want. Not one of those little pale ones who wobbles around in a corner. You really have to be someone who can only grasp the qualities of life, and that's the way it is.
Frederik II was also able to do this. But it has also given him a slightly undeserved reputation or legacy, because the sermons at his funeral explain all the excellent qualities to the priests. If he had been able to - it's often said that if he had been able to refrain from harmful drinking, he would have lived many more good days. It's not quite that that's what you pay attention to, but that's not quite what they say. They say that if he hadn't had all the representational obligations and everything that entails drinking so much, he could have had many more good days. So it wasn't because he was an alcoholic drunk sitting up here in the attic room where we are now standing.
But it was part of the culture, and he very much lived up to it, as did his son Christian the Fourth.
Maybe a little too much.
It could have been a lot of things along the way, but it certainly wasn't drinking that killed him, as some believed, because of the statements in the funeral sermon, historians have later sometimes believed that this was the case. But it wasn't. It was some kind of lung disease he had suffered from the last few years of his life.
You can also say, with the culture you just mentioned here, and this nobleman, who you say is a king I would die for, you can't suddenly say, no guys, I'm on the wagon. Stay in character, right.
And then we have a really talented, albeit dyslexic, but it doesn't really matter, really talented king, who was really into construction, I think you describe. Tiles and stones and everything, and he was very dedicated to this.
He remembered from Skanderborg Castle that there was some timber that we could use at Kronborg, and the tiles had to be laid there, and he was a really good king. Well, the thing is that dyslexia is a handicap when it comes to writing. But it's not a sign of anything, on the contrary, that you're not gifted or anything like that. It's just the practical skills. It didn't hamper him as he was king. Because lots of letters have gone out from Frederik II, which he dictated to his scribe, because of course if you had a scribe, he just had to go around and say what he needed to write down, and that's how it happened. So there are only a few letters from Frederick II that he wrote himself, because he felt that he was so bad at putting the letters together. But there are thousands of letters where he dictated things and cases and decisions, decisions.
Invitations for parties.
It's so cute the way you invited to a party back then, you invite people to come and make yourself happy with me. It's nice to make yourself happy with someone. I like that a lot.
Some of those who visited were actually English, because Denmark needed contacts with the then Queen Elizabeth of England. And then the official delegations came and were received here at Kronborg. It had to be festive. Right from the start. So of course, they were greeted with a cannon salute as they sailed into Øresund. The salute with cannons on the ramparts would greet them, and then they would enter the castle and the king would receive them. Often in a relaxed way, but of course with some kind of form, because I gave them a huge trophy, which they drank from together.
It was called a welcome back then, the cup itself was called a welcome, which the king took a big sip from and then passed on to his guests. Then they took turns. Everyone drank from the same cup, because this signaled that we're sticking together and there's a good atmosphere between us. That wouldn't be possible in times of corona. But it was a good symbol of togetherness and a way to start and bond right from the beginning. Then, of course, there were meals in the main hall or in the other smaller halls, which were perhaps a little cozier than the dance hall, where you could be served by the waiter who brought in some fine dishes. Even the so-called 'skuer' dishes, which couldn't be eaten, but looked great. You had both, so the shooting dishes were often built up with a wooden core with a piece of clothing, it could be pheasants and wild boar. Something that looked like a real wild boar and pheasants on the table. And then you had what you could eat, which was then carried around the table. And then of course there was plenty to drink and wine. For festive occasions, there was enough wine. On a daily basis it was beer. But when the king had distinguished guests, it was wine. And what impressed the English guests at Kronborg in particular was that the king had what was called cannon bowls. This means that when the Danish king said: "Now I would like to propose a toast to Queen Elisabeth of England, who is dear to my heart. A signal was then given to the lighthouse keeper, who stood out on the bastions by the cannons, when the king toasted the ship and blew the trumpet, all the castle's cannons fired.
And then the window panes rattled, and then you drank a glass of wine. When 5 minutes had passed, he said, well I think we should make a toast to Lord Willeby, long live. Then the guns went off, and that was something that made an impression.
In fact, this strange Danish custom has become so popular in Europe. So it's included in Shakespeare's play Hamlet, which is set in Denmark. And it's not because Shakespeare - I don't think he was at Kronborg himself, but he had actors in his troupe who had performed for Frederik II at Kronborg, and he had heard about it, and when he heard about making cannon bowls, he included it in Hamlet. The Danish king makes a cannon toast during the play.
It has simply been included in Hamlet.
Yes, he wants a bit of local color. The main character in Hamlet also has strange names like Claudius, which doesn't sound very Danish, but the thing with the cannon bowls was something that wild and strange Danes do. So we have to include that in the play. And it also says at the beginning of the play that it takes place at Castle Elsinore. Well, just the castle in Elsinore, so it doesn't even say Kronborg, but that's what it is.
It's included because Shakespeare knew the castle, as did all sorts of other Europeans. So if something was to take place in Denmark, where should it take place? At Kronborg, of course, because it was European famous.
And why was it so famous? Because what he built for Frederik II is big, it's beautiful, it's impressive. These are the wild parties. So now you say the English. But it's the same as it is all over Europe, that you have these...
It wasn't just the English, because there are also accounts from Germans, for example, different people who come to visit and experience the same thing. That mixture of relaxed hospitality on the part of the king and then at the same time the big blasts of celebrations, where they also included fireworks and especially a little later under Christian IV. We have descriptions of some huge fireworks constructions here near Kronborg, where they built a completely Turkish fortress, and as a backdrop stuffed with rockets and bombs. The fireworks display lasted for several hours, where it splashed and popped and boomed, and lots of extras participated as a fake attack on the castle, so there was shooting and banging. But that has also been part of the festivities. The joy of fireworks.
They've made some money and when Frederik dies, Sophie, his Sophie, she also makes a lot of money. So as I understand it, it's like she holds three huge weddings right in the wake of his departure, I was about to say.
Well, that was because Sophie was also a duchess's daughter, and she placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of a fine family. And when your daughters were getting married, it had to be done by the book. So they arranged the wedding of two of their daughters shortly after the king died. In both cases, a bride tax was imposed in Denmark, so all Danes paid a tax so that they could have a wedding. But the king's council, those who ruled together with the king, had probably imagined that they could get some of the revenue and not have to spend all the money on the party. Sofie said that it all had to be spent so that it could be done in the most beautiful way. So there are some seriously impressive parties with everything you could want in shiny silver suits studded with gold and every luxury you could possibly have.
So Frederick II actually leaves behind a kingdom that is doing reasonably well and has a large one that is rich.
That's why there are no problems, because they have plenty of money in the coffers, the royal family and the country as a whole have also recovered well from the wars against Sweden. So now it's actually a very rich and well-functioning country that he can pass on to his then very young son Christian the Fourth, who was only 11 years old when his father died.
He actually becomes king at 11 years old, right?
Well, yes, but that's what they call the chosen king. So in reality, he was sent to school. And then there were four nobles who managed all the practicalities. It was in fierce competition with Sophie, who would have liked to advise a little more than she did. Especially to provide her children with good marriages and good land that they could earn money from. She was very concerned with her family's economic interests in her politics, but she was not to be trifled with, because the little 14-year-old who had come to the country as Danish queen turned out to be a very talented and efficient woman who became one of the richest in Northern Europe during her long widowhood. So she is certainly not to be underestimated. She was the one who had so much money that it was her fortune that saved Christian IV when he was defeated in the Thirty Years' War as a grown man. She had so much money that she was able to ensure that Denmark didn't immediately go completely down the drain, and it was probably very clever of her to realize at an early stage that this Christian guy was a complete wastrel. But he didn't grow up here. They traveled around, but Christian the Fourth has spent ...
He has also been here. We have some very nice ones, we have a style book where he went to school at Kronborg and part of the exercises in the style book was to write Latin. And then you had to write little encyclicals on topics that interested you. In any case, he writes in one of these encyclicals that the other day my father, the king, came down to us when we were working in the hall here at Kronborg, and he thought they should all get some fresh air. And I should also get up on the ramparts and do something, and my teacher might not believe it," he writes. But the king has said so, he writes in the freestyle. So maybe he can go and play on the bastions with his school friends.
But at the same time, you get a glimpse of Frederik the Second as a father. He was the presentable one who could do all the things you needed to be, but at the same time he was a hugely loving family man, you get the impression that he shows up and takes an interest in his son if they need some fresh air. There are also some very sweet little notes. He has to write a calendar, just a printed calendar, where he could write some very short things, but you get some glimpses of the father, where he writes: Today I measured my sons. You've been inside and put little lines on the door frame somewhere in the castle, and then you can see how tall Christian has become and you're happy for your boys. And then he's happy for Sofie, because in those calendars he's always writing that today I went to Skanderborg and my Sofie was with me, or my Sofie was in Kolding and I was in Skanderborg. Every single day he writes where Sofie is and where his children are. Today I ate with my Sofie and two of our daughters in the forest.
Then you're on a picnic,
But it's very funny, because somehow we were very much into the parties. But when Frederik II ever writes about the parties, it's really more about his daily life that he writes about.
It's the everyday stuff he writes about. The parties are more just something you have to do.
We only know about them from the people who come here, and there's also one in your book where a source says that he had to sit at the table for six to eight hours.
Yes, it was these huge meals where dishes were brought in all the time, so there were not so few of the guests to write. When he was there, they could hardly go home themselves because they had had too much to drink along the way. But in any case, that was what was included in the big parties.
It was special in Denmark. It's special in Denmark or in Northern Europe, but the Danes had a reputation for it and it's not without a reason. And we still have a reputation for it. So we just have to admit that it was part of the festivities.
But that brings me back to the reality of this room that we are in, you could say that Frederick the Second had to perform like this party lion.
But then maybe that was also a reason why he prioritized these rooms, and it has been his room where we are standing. What do we call this tower room?
It's called the King's Carnatic Tower.
A bay window is one that hangs on the outside of a house and the tower hangs out on the corner of Kronborg. That's why you can see three sides from the windows.
Look, here it is Helsingborg in the foreground.
We can look down on the Flag Bastion. Back then it was called Strand-Bastion, where the king also had a gazebo at the end of the bastion. And then we can look north up the Sound. The ships had to sail when they were going north. This is to the exit. From here you can look up to the king's pleasure garden. There are still a lot of trees that are now called Marienlyst Castle, which is located by the King's pleasure garden. It was difficult to create a magnificent garden in a fortress where there were bastions all around. So that's why they put the garden up there. And then there was about a kilometer up, but you could move quickly. You can't see it because there are a lot of houses built in front of it. But there is a pleasure palace called Marienlyst, and in the middle of Marienlyst is Frederik II's pleasure house, called Lundehaven. It's still there, of course.
It was built in the late 1760s,
There were just parties, parties, parties in the gazebo, the gazebo garden.
And again, it was probably a place where, like in this room, you could retreat again.
And then you could go out and do different kinds of sports, and there was a riding arena and other good things out there, so that was also something you could do.
Some of the coolest parties have been up here.
At least I think so, what has been the most fun is hard to say.
I think it has been a lot of fun, also because there was good entertainment and talented entertainers who performed at such castle parties.
And who could travel further afield and talk about some of those who have been there, who can then tell Shakespeare about what was going on.
How it happened. It couldn't have been an act. No one spoke English back then. Virtually no Danes. But that was highly unusual. Everyone speaks German. And then there was someone who knew a little French. But English was a strange foreign language. So how it actually went when the king had a visit from England, there must have been an interpreter unless they tried to speak Latin, but they probably weren't very good at that, because his Latin lessons were difficult. So it must have been difficult, but they succeeded.
A party with an interpreter, so why not.
They have probably been able to manage somehow. Or maybe there was just a single..., the interpreter may not have been just a subordinate. There were some Danish noblemen who had that broad education and knew many different languages. They could just be a part of the company, and you'd probably figure it out.
Well, maybe interpreted in a discreetly festive way.
I think so.
What the British envoy says.
Because the English report that the Danish king had said that if he had not been happily married, he would have loved to be married to the English Queen Elizabeth, because she had always been very close to his heart.
I think he's been a bit drunk already.
That may well be the case. In fact, in his youth he had tried his hand at wooing Elizabeth of England.
As part of all those maneuvers to find a politically advantageous party. Not because he was interested. At that point, nothing ever came of it either. She never married, Elizabeth. She stayed unmarried, because then she could continue to rule without any men interfering in anything.
She loved to be feted by all kinds of suitors. So there were plenty of people who tried, and Frederik was among them at the time. But later on, when he was sitting here as king, happily married to Sophie, he had a very good relationship with Elizabeth. They exchanged gifts of various kinds of English hunting dogs and horses.
There was also this thing about sticking together.
It was exactly what it looked like that way. That's also why the English delegations come. They are fond of the Order of the Garter, the Order and the Guarder, a very fine English order that still exists. It was to be handed over here at Kronborg. It was one of the occasions when there were parties. And the king had been worried beforehand because the symbol of the Order of the Garter is a picture of St. George and the dragon, and it was actually a Catholic saint.
That's why the king doesn't want to wear that medallion, so he had to make sure that he didn't have to wear the whole suit when he became a knight of the Order of the Garter. That was negotiated and the festivities can be held here.
But we have to end by thinking about when we know something about when it is the last time that Frederik II is actually here at Kronborh, because they don't live here permanently, you don't live anywhere permanently at all.
He was there for a really long time when the castle was completed in 1585, 1586, but the following year 1587 he was only there for a week.
He then spent time elsewhere in Denmark and in 1588, the year he died, he was on his way to Kronborg, but never made it. He had been living down in Southern Jutland. Then he traveled across Funen on his way to Kronborg, but he only managed to see Antvorskov outside Slagelse, which was their castle. Then he became so ill that he had to lie down there. But he never made it to Kronborg. Then he died at Easter 1588. But the celebrations continued under Christian 4.
This was just a small part of Kronborg's history. A little peek into the history of Denmark's largest Renaissance castle. The castle has gone through many wild things in the years it has stood where Denmark almost kisses Sweden on the foot. There's no longer any reason to believe that Kronborg's cannons can shoot ships into the Sound or be used to throw parties for Europe's royalty and nobility, firing them every time someone says cheers.
In return, we now have a castle full of stories whose echoes we can still hear