[Footnote 7]: Esrom Lake, situated about eight English miles from Elsinore, is a fair specimen of the placid lake scenery of Zealand. The monastery is still in part in a habitable state.
[Footnote 8]: "Axel and Valborg," one of the gems of Scandinavian poetry. The interest of the poem turns on the separation of the hero and heroine (who had been betrothed from childhood) by an interdict of the church, on the plea of the parties standing within a forbidden degree of affinity to each other. This affinity, however, consisted merely in having one common godmother. Circumstances like these, however trivial, were frequently made available by the church for the extension of its power, and the furtherance of its secular interests.
[Footnote 9]: Flynderborg, the castle at Elsinore, of which no vestiges now remain. Its site was not far from that of the present castle of Cronberg.
[Footnote 10]: At this period the Hanseatic merchants were absolute masters of the whole trade of the Baltic. The Danish fleet was in a reduced state, and the Hanse were therefore under the necessity of guarding the seas themselves, for the security of their trade. This was peculiarly the case during the disturbed reign of Eric Glipping, when the northern pirate, Alf Erlingsen, infested the Danish seas. This is the subject of a ballad still preserved among the Danish peasantry,--
"The German men they sailed up the sound,
With meal and with malt sailed they,
But Erlingsen's ships there to meet them they found,
And theirs he took all for his prey."
In the time of Eric Glipping the Hanse had no less than thirty armed vessels stationed in the sound at Elsinore.--Translator's Note.
[Footnote 11]: Carl the German.