Farevejle Church
What follows is my account of my visit to track down Bothwell's body in Denmark, adapted from an e-mail to the Freedom-L mailing list.
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As you probably remember, Bothwell's life ended in Dragsholm Castle. After that, things get a bit more mysterious in that his body was variously said to be in a church or in a museum, his head even being displayed on a writing table at Dragsholm and being used as a football (having seen what we did of the way the Danes have treated his body, I don't believe this). But it seemed pretty certain that it was in Faarevejle, about five miles from Dragsholm.
We spent three days in Copenhagen, and were lucky enough to be able to see an exhibition on Medieval life which was on there. Copenhagen is incredibly tourist friendly, everyone speaks English, and this kind of gave us a false impression of how easy things were going to be. At the tourist office we found out how to reach Dragsholm Castle, and set off the next day on a journey into the back of beyond, where English was an alien tongue.
We had to change trains at a place called Holbaek, which was where we made our first error. Being used to English trains ( where connections are never as advertised), when we arrived late we assumed our connection had left and we would have to wait for the next train on to Hoevre. We wondered where all the other passengers had gone, then saw them all sitting on a train as it pulled out past where we were sitting waiting. Yes, in Denmark they hold the connections if you are late. After an interesting hour and a bit's wait, we finally got our train to Hoevre.
When we got to this tiny one-track station, there was no sign of any public transport to Dragsholm, and no people around except for a collection of drunken men outside a pub. I was half expecting to see tumbleweed rolling down the 'main' street. We tried to ask the men for a taxi number, but they couldn't understand us, and found it all hilarious. Anil then phoned the hotel and managed to persuade a surly receptionist to send us a taxi. We had to wait with the men pointing and laughing at us.
Dragsholm Castle is amazing. It is one of the most haunted castles in Europe, and on the first night we seemed to be the only ones there. It has been rebuilt since Bothwell was imprisoned there, but they say that the dungeon he was kept in is still there, and so we set out to look for it.
It was quite spooky wandering round, but we didn't see any sign of a dungeon. We we would have missed it, but at one point Anil called me back to look at a wardrobe, and as I turned, there was a picture of Lord Bothwell! EEEK! There was an arrow pointing to a toilet, and when we got there, there was a door to the side of it.
Steps led down to what appeared to be a cellar, with some dummies of Bothwell and John Clark (another Scotsman, and enemy of Bothwell's), on beds. There was some history on the walls in Danish, but completely unintelligible to us (I could say 'jy es vegetar', and that was practically it). I had my doubts on the authenticity of all this, but then I saw a very spooky thing, which was a crescent-shaped shallow ditch on the floor. I had been under the impression that Bothwell had been tied to a post and had inscribed a circle around it with his pacing, but when I checked it out later, it turned out that the post had been fixed to the wall, and so the pacing would have been in a semi-circle. In any case, the place had a very bad atmosphere, and I couldn't stay there long.
Dragsholm itself is the most forboding place - you enter into a courtyard which is surrounded by HUGELY imposing buildings on all sides. I found it quite oppressive in there, although our rooms were gorgeous, and the terrace to the back was just a wonderful place to be. Whilst we were there, we had a day-long heatwave, hotter than a Scottish summer (it was October). We spent a day on the beach and then the terrace, drinking beer. We had to move into the shade, it was so hot.
After a difficult phone conversation with an elderly Danish lady who spoke as little English as we did Danish, we found out the Faarevejle Museum was only open on Wednesdays, which was the day we were due to return to Copenhagen, but we had time to go beforehand. We took a taxi there, but the Museum appeared to be closed. Undeterred, the valiant adventurers hammered on the door, until a little man appeared, looking surprised and delighted to have visitors.
We asked him about Lord Bothwell and he showed us to an exhibition of casts and photographs of the skull and mummified body, also a reconstruction of his face from the skull. He then disappeared, returning with photocopied information in English translation about the body and its history - far more detailed than anything I'd seen before. This was just heaven, and we stayed and took photographs. We had a look around the rest of the museum (paying lots of attention to the exhibits, and asking lots of questions so the man could feel useful), then went across to the church.
We had to ask a cleaning lady where Lord Bothwell was, and she seemed surprised and a bit suspicious that anyone English speaking would want to know. Not for the first time we were asked 'American?'. It seems like only Americans are expected to make strange pilgrimages to the Danish countryside.
He's kept in a crypt to the side of the most beautiful whitewashed church, where his body is housed in a huge polished wooden casket. There are pictures of his body on a wall to the side, and a plaque on the wall at the bottom of the casket which says In Memoriam James Hepburn. On top of the casket is stuck a piece of paper which reads:
Well, it was all a bit much for me. At first there was disbelief that I was finally here, with him. Then I felt so, so sorry for him, for the thwarting of all the plans and dreams he'd had, of the destiny that he'd deserved but never realised. Of the way it had all gone so horribly wrong for someone who deserved so much more. For a man of action to have had to spend so long deprived of his liberty is a horrible thought. Dragsholm has ravens which make the most incredibly loud noise, and I'd lie there and wonder if he could hear them in his prison - his only contact with the outside world.
I was having a little weep by now, so I read the visitors book, and I couldn't find any English writing for ages. What was there wasn't from Scots, so I felt sad all over again that a man who had been so unswervingly loyal to his country, in a time when expedient treachery was quite the done thing, should be so ignored by his modern countrymen.
I was too upset to write anything profound, I can't remember what I did write, but there's no way it expressed my feelings. Before we left, though, I was cheered up to think that the Danes have treated him so well in death.