“Which room did Shakespeare write Hamlet in?” was a frequent question when tourists were first admitted to Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, in the 1920s. The line elicits knowing chuckles from present-day visitors to what is now one of Denmark’s top tourist attractions. We, of course, know the Bard never visited Denmark, and that the Elsinore castle he specfies as the setting of Hamlet is based on pure imagination. Or is it?

I’m not so sure. In the course of researching an historical novel, I’d come across curious strands of insider information about Kronborg Castle in Shakespeare’s play. Somebody, it seemed, had given the playwright the low-down on castle life. Were these details purely coincidental? I was in the town of Elsinore, 45 minute’s train ride from Copenhagen on the wind-cracked coastline of the Sound (the narrow gateway to the Baltic) to find out. […continued]