Northern Zealand

The island that Copenhagen sits on is called Zealand - (not the one that makes New Zealand 'new', thats in The Netherlands) - so after we picked up our hire car we drove to the northern part of the island along the coast road to visit Kronborg Castle, the one that Shakespeare made famous in Hamlet. We continued around the coast and through the countryside to then also visit Fredericksborg Castle before returning back to Copenhagen.

We stopped at this small area for morning tea. The boys had fun throwing the beach stones into the water

My view. The whole coast was postcard beautiful - but unfortunately I was driving so not many photos - Ethan still needs to develop his taking photos whilst driving skills!

Hello Sweden!

Lunch at Kronborg castle (in background)

The ferry from Kronborg across the Sound to Sweden.

The King placed a fee on ships going through the Sound past Kronborg Castle and into the Baltic Sea. If you stopped/indicated ready for payment it was OK, if you didn't then these beauties would fire a 12 pound cannonball at you until you did stop. After the fire in the castle they increased the payment to pay for rebuilding it. It ended in the mid 1800s when countries paid one last fee equivalent to what they had paid in the previous 10 years - all except Brazil  (I think) who didn't pay it until 2004!

Kronborg Castle, moat and small village within 'walls'

The cannons pointing into the Sound - thats Sweden over there.

One side of the inner courtyard of the castle

The Chapel. It was the only part of the castle that was not damaged during the fire because of the manner in which this area was constructed.

Carved wooden ceiling. The ceilings in the remainder of the castle wet like this prior to the fire, but afterwards were decorated in a Renaissance style with paintings instead.

The Casements in the wall of the castle were quite interesting, but very dark - not too many pictures!

A concrete replica of the original plaster statue depicting Holger the Dane, who is a famous figure in Danish history. It was replaced as it was rotting in the damp of the casements. The plaster statue was copied from a bronze, but because more famous than the original.

This was one of the 'lighter' areas of the casements, unless we were right next to a window looking over the moat at least.

One of the rooms, taken with a flash.

This is the Kings room as it looked after the castle was refurbished. It was Frederick II who used Kronberg the most and instituted the Sound Dues - but it was his son Christian IV who refurbished it after the fire in 1629.

The Queen's Room, which is next door to the King's.  It was built for Sofie of Mecklenberg, wife of Frederick II 

The Queen's Corridor - this allowed Sofie to directly and easily walk from her room to either the Ballroom or the Chapel. It is apparently wide enough to allow her skirts to pass through without brushing against the walls etc - all I can say is that they must have been some skirts - the width of the corridor is about 3 or 4m!

The Ballroom. The painting are a series that continues from the Queen's corridor depicting important events in Danish history.

Tapestries. Frederick II had 40 of them commissioned to depict the Danish Kings, 14 survive - these are 2 of the 7 in this room the others are at the National Museum, the room coincidently smelt like wet carpet! There were hundreds of other tapestries in the rest of the Royal Apartments as well.

This is called the King's Table Tapestry. It was woven to sit above the thrones - so that when Frederick and Sofie looked at it they were reminded of what type of rulers they wanted to be - it has elements of justice, empathy, service, modesty depicted, to name a few.

Another room with tapestries on the walls - this one in the refurbished Renaissance style (note the black/white tiles)

Yet another series of rooms, these ones renovated much later.

This was the view from the chambers that were specifically installed for Sofie's mother the Duchess of Mecklenburg. The King's and Queen's chambers are directly below and have the same view of the Sound, but one floor lower!

This is Fredericksborg Castle - it was amazing. Unfortunately we arrived too late to go inside so I'm afraid if you want to know anything much about it you might have to google it!

This is another view of the courtyard where I took the picture of the castle above. The castle is on my left in this picture. The tower in this picture leads to  bridge over the moat and to another group of buildings.

This is the view from the bridge that is through the tower in the picture above.

This is the fourth side of the courtyard - the original picture of the castle is now on the right of this building.

Inner Courtyard

More detailed picture.

It is surrounded by water - a moat on 2 sides and the lake on the other. Opposite it (where I took this from) is a large beautiful formal garden.

This shows some of the formal garden and the castle.

Houses on the other side of the lake.

There were 4 large beds like this one with hedges making a design - unfortunately it wasn't clear from here exactly what monogram/design it was, although you could make out a crown at the top. I suspect you can probably see it clearly from inside the castle.

This is called the "Bath Palace" and the "King's Spring" is nearby, so maybe its where he had a bath?!

Some flowers from the garden - ones that I have not ever seen before.

I've seen something similar to this one, but this pot had no name telling you what it was!

Plenty of ducks around - these ones followed walked towards us when they heard the boys and followed us for some way - I guess in this park the sound of children means food!