"But the little child in bed saw clearly the old Kronborg towering above the Oere Sound; he saw the real Holger Danske, sitting alone in the deep vault, his beard grown fast to the marble table, dreaming of all that happened overhead. Holger Danske dreamed too of all that went on in the little room; he heard every word, and nodded in his dreams. "'Yes,' he cried, 'keep me in your hearts and in your memory, ye Danish folk. In the hour of danger, I shall be at hand.' "And the clear daylight fell over Kronborg; the wind bore along the sound of the hunting horns from the country round; the ships sailed by with their greeting 'Boom, boom!' And Kronborg answered 'Boom! Boom!' But Holger Danske woke not, let them thunder as loud as they might, for they only meant 'good morning!' 'good evening!'" In this castle too in 1589 James VI. (and afterwards I.) was married to his Danish bride. That was only by proxy so far as the Scot was concerned, but the next year Queen Anne brought her husband to sojourn at the well-loved spot. By the sea is a long sandy beach and dark woods cover the flat lands behind. The superb castle was rising, or re-rising, from the ground during Shakespeare's younger years (1577-85); he first went to London the year after it was done. A grand sample of Renaissance work, it stands four-square to all the winds and protects a court within; details are carved in solid stone. And at each angle rises a tower, all different in design and height. A light for the shipping burns in one.[72] The architect was G. F. Stahlmann. The world fame of Elsinore is owed very largely to the immortal English bard who probably never was there. On the flat terrace between castle and sound Hamlet spoke with his father's ghost. The tale of Amlet or Hamlet seems to be derived from some old saga of a Jutish prince,[73] and the _Ambales Saga_ gives an Icelandic form of the legend. True, indeed, that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, like his other plays, whose scene is laid abroad, lacks special local colour. But it is no weak link between Denmark and the world of English speech that the scene of one of the great masterpieces of Saxon literature, indeed of all the writings of the earth, is laid on Danish soil. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII VISBY Thou wonnest, O warrior-wager, Tribute from folk of Gothland, And durst not men against thee With brand to ward their island. So ran the Isle-syslings' war-host; I heard that the wolf-kind's hunger Thawed east-away. OTTAR THE SWART, in praise of Olaf the Holy. There was a time very long ago when a spectral island floated on the Baltic brine. Its mist-wrapped shores appeared at times to perplexed mariners, but when they tried to land there all was sea.