Hamlet's Castle & a King turned Pirate

Erin, my lovely roommate from oh-so-long-ago, is currently in Brussels interning for NATO (pretty cool, huh?) and decided pop over to Copenhagen for the weekend. (We seem to be quite the little globe-trotters over here!) Our major goal for the weekend: visit Hamlet's castle in Helsingor/Elsinore, a sleepy little town about a 45 minute train ride from the capital. The castle is actually called Kronborg, but it's also supposedly the castle described in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The castle boasts really quite an intriguing history, and played a rather significant role in solidifying Danish regional power back in the day. (Denmark as a major power – who knew?) Denmark was able to really increase its wealth and power in the late 1300s/early 1400s once it gained control over the maritime traffic coming from the Baltic Sea. (I'd like to just also mention that it was a woman, Danish Queen Maragaret, who united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway thereby allowing later kings to enjoy the spoils.) As proud as I am of dear Queen M, it's Erik of Pomerania who really won me over. For one, he rather impressively managed to increase Denmark's power and clout in the region thanks to a tax levied on every ship that sailed their waters. Even more incredibly when King Erik was eventually forced to abdicate – instead of ending up decapitated like so many other sovereigns in history – he went into the pirating business! (Not that I support pirating, but you've got to give credit to the guy for being so darn creative!)

Oddly, it seems as if pirating wasn't seen as a completely ignoble profession, either. Apparently, you could obtain royal permission to become a pirate and sack ships – just so long as you didn't sack ships flying the flag of your patron country or their allies. For a realist world focused on expansion and glory from war, this must have seemed like a rather cost effective means of poking at adversaries. So you'd like to invade and claim your neighbor's territory? ...Why not find yourself a maritime guerrilla mercenary to cause problems for them too??

Another character who intrigued me was King Frederick (insert Roman numeral of your choice here. I can't remember the number, and doubt you would either!). The man decided he that he needed more support for the crown, that a little propaganda was in order. To show everyone the power of the crown, he ordered the creation of 43 tapestries depicting Danish kings in all their glory. Clearly, the world had not yet refined the art of lying to the public yet because a) 43 tapestries likely weren't going to do much other than ensure that the castle stayed a little warmer in the winters, and b) almost all tapestries failed to be overly praising and some were not even remotely flattering.** For example, one tapestry included a poem of a king that brought the country to financial ruin; another showed a snake slithering past the king's image – reminding the observer that this king had gained the throne by killing his relative. Let's just say these men weren't exactly the “poster children” for kingship. All in all, Hamlet's castle and its history were completely delightful, albeit somewhat confusing at times.

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*At that time, Denmark also held control of what is today's Sweden. Take a look at a map; any ship traveling from or to the Baltic Sea couldn't avoid passing through Danish waters. To keep other countries and shipping companies from getting too fussy about this arrangement, Denmark also eventually put up light houses along the route to help ships on their way.

**I really hope all you readers realize that a lot of this post is tongue-and-cheek. I know I've been in Russia a full 10 hours now, but no, I have not suddenly become a classic realist bent on expansion and a proponent of political propaganda to quiet local dissent.