The cathedrals and churches of Norway, Sweden and Denmark

Front matter

THE CATHEDRALS OF NORWAY SWEDEN AND DENMARK**®

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FRANCIS BUMPUS fZ CHARLOTTE STREET. LONUi

Contents

Chap, I Introductory Sketch I

II Some Ecclesiastical Particulars 63

III From Osnabruck to Copenhagen by

Chapter I

THE three countries of which this work treats are rich in remains of ancient ecclesiastical architecture, yet their ecclesiology has hitherto been but little regarded, or at least we have not had the advantage of any published work which disposes of it in a general manner.

Some industrious archaeologists have, it is true, occasionally recorded their impressions of Scandinavian architecture in some particular districts, but as the fruits of their researches have only been made known through the medium of papers and lectures published in the transactions of several architectural and ecclesiological societies they are hardly accessible to the lay reader.

Among such papers I would refer especially to one published in the volume of the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1 891, by Mr J. Tavernor Perry, whose long acquaintance with, and knowledge of, Scandinavian and Baltic architecture generally, has fully qualified him to speak with authority on the subject.

From the paucity of literature in this particular field of European ecclesiology, it is hardly surprising to find that the Scandinavian cathedrals and churches are so little known.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to show how

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much there is grand, interesting and instructive in such Romanesque and Pointed Gothic churches as Linkoping, Lund, Mariboe, Orebro, Ribe, Roeskilde, Soro,Trondhjem, Upsala and Viborg — structures whose very names are all but unknown in England except, perhaps, to a few learned ecclesiologists.

As such descriptions may induce readers to widen their knowledge of Continental church architecture by a visit to these three northern countries, together with their islands of Bornholm and Gottland, I have drawn up a simple flan de route, which, wholly or in part, might be embodied in a very pleasant and novel holiday excursion. The route taken will be found marked out on the map which accompanies this volume.

A desire to revisit certain old cities in the North of Germany led me to approach Denmark by the Harwich and Hook of Holland route, instead of by the more direct one from Harwich to Esbjaerg on the west coast of Jutland. This was within the last forty years a mere fishing village, but, owing to its situation in an almost direct line from London to Copenhagen, it has developed into a place of some importance.

My first halt was at Osnabriick, in Westphalian Prussia, whence, via Minden, Verden, Liineburg, and Lubeck, I reached Schleswig. Here my Danish architectural studies may be said to have commenced.

From Schleswig, through Flensborg and Kolding, neither of which contains anything to warrant more than a few hours' sojourn — I speak, of course, from an ecclesiological point of view — Fredericia was reached. I now left Jutland for the present, and crossed the Little Belt by the steam ferry to Middelfart on the island of Funen, whence, after sojourns at Odense and Nyborg, I embarked from the latter for Korsor, setting foot in Zealand after an enjoyable passage across the Great Belt of about an hour and a half. From Korsor I travelled through Soro and Ringsted to Roeskilde, which I found to be a convenient point de depart for Kallundborg in a westernly, and for MariboS, on the island of Laaland, in a southernly direction. Returning to Roeskilde, the journey was resumed along the main line to Copenhagen, whence steamers depart six times daily — thrice before, and thrice after, noon — for Malmo on the south coast of Sweden, the time occupied in crossing the Sound being about the same as that between Nyborg and Korsor.

From Lund, to which there are frequent trains from Malmo, I passed through Christianstad, Vexio, and Linkoping to Stockholm.

New and Old Upsala were conveniently visited in a couple of days from the Swedish capital, whose ecclesiology is not sufficiently interesting to demand a long stay, however delightful the "Venice of the North" may be, with her proud palaces, and her buildings, squares and statues; her bridges, tacking on small islands to the parent "stock"; her blue lake, her green hill-sides, her narrowing expanses of water, studded with myriads of vessels; and her little steamer-gondolas, puffing and fussing like busy waterbeetles in a microscope — at a pace apparently quite dangerous to those visiting Stockholm for the first time.

Metal more attractive, however, awaited me in the island of Gottland, for whose capital, and indeed only town of importance, Wisby, a steamer leaves^ Riddarholm, in Stockholm, three times a week,^the voyage occupying about fifteen hours.

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Having devoted some time to Wisby and the many curious and interesting old churches in which Gottland abounds, I returned to Stockholm, whence through Strengnas, Orebro, and Lidkoping, I arrived at Christiania> which, if the Gamle Akers Kyrka may be excepted, is as jejune architecturally as Copenhagen and Stockholm.

The best part of a week was occupied by a journey to Trondhjem and back to Christiania, whence, via Gothenburg and Frederikshavn, I found myself once more in Jutland, this time at the northern extremity of the peninsula. The two grand Danish Romanesque cathedrals of Viborg and Ribe were next visited, a railway journey from the latter of about six hours bringing me back into Germany at Hamburg, whence through Bremen and Miinster I reached my starting place, Osnabriick, after a tour which, although vastly pleasant and novel, passed without any incidents beyond the ordinary ones of travel.

To the lofty mountains of Norway, and the rough but picturesque and undulating moorlands of South Sweden, the smiling pasture lands and hollowy beech woods of Denmark present a marked contrast. Few countries, however,, are less likely to attract the attention of the admirer of natural scenery or to arrest the footsteps of the wandering artist in search of subjects for his sketch-book as Denmark, and yet there is something in this absence of the grand and beautiful in the general aspect of that country which is by no means devoid of interest.

With its vast sweeps of corn and meadow-land, thickly studded with neat villages, substantial red-tiled or thatched homesteads and windmills, and with its towns, if on the seacoast snugly nestled at the extreme end of a fiord, if inland on the banks of some deep-watered lake, surrounded in either case by woods, Denmark undoubtedly lias a charm of its own.

The country towns of Denmark are, however, as a rule, poorly and monotonously built, and the traveller must not expect to find them presenting any such fine assemblages of domestic architecture as are to be met with in Brunswick, Hildesheim, and other North German cities.

Speaking generally, the scenery of Denmark recalls that of Lincolnshire and those parts of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire adjacent to it — districts where, if nature has been sparing of her gifts, art has been bountiful, for there it is that many of the noblest of those parish churches which are the pride and glory of England are to be found.

And here it may be observed that Lincolnshire is, perhaps, the part of England which received most completely, and retained most strongly, the influences of the Danish conquest, and it is not extraordinary that a visitor from thence should trace at every step some peculiarity of his native land. The differences of the dialects of our northern tongues have been made much more clear to us of late years than they used to be, and this careful study of them has brought out the fact that differences of race are by no means conterminous with the boundaries of kingdoms, and that, taking in a large way a consideration of language and names of places as well as of the physical appearance of the inhabitants, we have arrived at sounder views both of the districts from which conquerors came, and of the extent of their power.

In considering the ecclesiastical architecture of Denmark, it is to be noted that its influence on the rest of Europe has been but slight, and, however attractive its churches may be to the archaeologist, they are hardly cal-

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culated to command the attention or to enlist the admiration of those who have the glorious structures of England, France and north-western Germany in mind.

The larger churches of Denmark do not differ very materially in style from those of such cities neighbouring to the Baltic as Lubeck, Rostock, Stettin and Wismar, except in some minor details arising from local tastes and the influence of local materials. We find the same flat strips of pilaster connected at the top with rude arcading, with which we are familiar in the ancient churches of Northern Germany, and in very early Romanesque buildings in England. Portions of the great churches at Aarhuus, Ribe and Viborg might have come from Westphalia, the Rhenish Provinces and Lower Saxony.

It is in the smaller parish churches of Denmark that we find the most marked speciality of type — the most interesting localisms — as everywhere else. This special characteristic arises doubtless to some extent from the difficulty, especially for small churches in country districts, of doing anything but the simplest work with such materials as red-brick and granite, which were the staple building materials of Denmark.

It has been my happiness during the last twenty years to see as much of the church architecture of north-western Europe as has fallen to the lot of most, and it has always been a pleasure to dwell on that which hardly requires a professional eye to appreciate, viz., the marvellous beauty with which the architects of the Middle Ages adapted the particular cathedral or church to the particular locality — seashore, river-side, mountain-top, hill-slope, wooded dell and where not else.

Upon the influence of local scenery on local architecture I might dwell at great length, but as I must confine myself to the ecclesiology of the countries of which this book is designed to treat, I will only mention one of the many churches which brought home to my mind the wonderful power which medieval architects possessed in adapting the building to the spot — I mean that of Mariboe* in the Danish island of Laaland.

Of the general character of the churches in Denmark I shall presently give some idea. Of Mariboe Cathedral I wish especially to speak as regards its situation.

The western facade gives, as the French would say, on one of those little inland lakes that are so common in Denmark. Let the reader imagine such a cathedral as St Asaph, set down on a sandy plain, surrounded on all sides but the east by the pines and beeches and oaks which make Denmark so beautiful; while, on the east, the little ripples of the lake are continually lapping (and never more than that) against the basement-mouldings of the choir. The cathedral of Mariboe itself is not especially remarkable among Danish churches; but its situation, jutting out as it does into a quiet inland lake, stretching away infinitely to the east, but on the north and south skirted, when I saw it in August, with the lovely contrast of young beech and aged fir — the whole, taken together, made me think it one of the most charming ecclesiological landscapes I had ever beheld. Calling it up to memory, I still believe that, in its way, the situation of Mariboe* Cathedral is almost unique among western churches.

Red brick had accompanied me all the way from Verden to Schleswig, but it was not until I reached Middelfart, in Funen, that I became acquainted with the manner in which the Danish architects manipulated that material.

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In the islands, in iEeroe, in Falster, in Moen, above all in Laaland, and in Zealand itself, I learnt what local necessities can do in originating a local style.

It is clear that, from whatever reason, stone was utterly unattainable by the medieval architects of Denmark. Except in some parts of Jutland, and for some such great effort as the cathedral at Roeskilde, the virtually, though not nominally, metropolitan church of Denmark: and the truthfulness and honesty with which they carried out their material is admirable, as witness the solemn Romanesque Cistercian church at Soro and its neighbour at Ringsted. Only in one instance, as far as I was able to see, is Danish brickwork cast in any other form but that in ordinary use. This one exception, and it is not very frequent, is the curved brick necessary for the formation of a flattened ogee. Otherwise the external ornamentation — and most richly ornamented are the churches — consists of bricks alternately projecting square, and therefore depressed square, lengthwise or breadthwise, narrow side, horizontal or perpendicular, or projecting in angular fashion, which, I believe (and comparing it with our "dogtooth," the coincidence is remarkable), to be a chief characteristic of Danish work.*

I ought to write on this subject with all modesty, for altogether I have not seen a hundred and thirty Danish churches, but what I did see were taken fairly all over the country, and, with the exception of the Faroes,

*As a specimen of this kind of work, I would single out the ornamentation of the eastern gable of Our Lady's Church at Odense. Lighted by a Romanesque triplet, the whole facade, though severely plain, may be taken as quite typical of its age and class. The red-brick church is, like the majority of Danish ones, built upon a basement of granite, so as to form a plinth all round the structure.

there is not a single island which I did not see during this tour.

In the Middle Pointed, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century churches, the fenestration is always of one type — a broad-pointed window-opening enclosing from two to six or seven lancet lights, all running up to the arch. Honest the Danish architects were; artistic they were certainly not, and therefore unable, like the Italians, to mould their brickwork into the varied forms of tracery prevalent during those periods.

The east end of a Danish church is almost always flat. In the twelfth and thirteenth century a very strongly marked decorated moulding is frequently formed by the simple process of omitting four bricks so as to form a cross in the centre of the gable.

In Romanesque examples, which, as a rule, have three equal windows in the east end, the arch is formed of a brown, gritty and hardly to be admired, sandstone. I failed to learn where it could have come from. Granite is very largely used for the lower part of the walls, even of the smallest village churches, sometimes to the height of as much as six feet.

The church at Taarnby, in Laaland, is a highly decorated example of brickwork. It is what we should call "Early English." Two equal lancets light the east end; they are not arched, but made by sloping two bricks against each other. The triforia, the clerestory, above all the aisle windows with their mouldings, show what can be done by a great artist, even with such a material.

Perhaps the most astonishing church I saw was that at Middelfart, in Funen. Throughout the whole building there is not a single effect produced which could not, in

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its way, be worked out with a child's box of bricks, provided only glue might be used.

I have already alluded to the great number of village churches in Denmark.

On the Sunday evening of my sojourn in Odense, I walked from that town for some distance along the road to Middelfart. As the sun was setting I reached the brow of, for Denmark, a very steep and high hill, and then, looking to the south-west and catching the saddle-back towered churches which cluster there as thickly as in Leicestershire, that rich deep tint which six or seven centuries impart to brick drawn out to its full in the red rays of the setting sun, I thought I had never seen a more delightful ecclesiastical landscape. And a curious proof from the opposite side of the question was this. A few days after I was at Lund. As the train neared the railway station, and I caught my first view of the pearly-grey twin towers of its Romanesque cathedral, I could not think what made the whole scene so tame and colourless and insipid until I remembered that for three weeks before I had been viewing churches that possessed the richest and deepest of external colour.

While externally nothing can be more different in appearance than the unornamented walls, broach spires, clearly cut lancets and exquisite mouldings, of a First Pointed church in England, and the brick niches and arcades, the stepped and gabled tower, the stepped nave and chancel, and the Tudor-like windows of a similar building in Denmark; these differences are on the surface and accidental, and arise simply from the almost universal use of stone in England and its absence in Denmark.

But the essential similarity consists in the rarity of apsidal or transeptal churches among Danish as well as English churches.

The norm is that which has been called the Irish, not the Roman. The only important difference is the very general occurrence of an immense south porch and parvise, which gives occasion for the most elegant and fanciful external brick ornamentation, and which seems to have formed a recognized part of the ordinary ground plan of a Danish church. One other general remark may be made, that fully five-sixths of the churches now in existence are of Romanesque or First Pointed date, the great majority being transitional.

From churches of the first class the cathedral of Ribe and a church at Mariboe may be selected for brief descriptions, since they respectively illustrate the Romanesque and Pointed Gothic periods of Danish church architecture.

The level marshes and meadows which spread far and wide about the West Jutland city of Ribe are impressive in their way, and add to the effect of the towers of its cathedral; as much landmarks here as the tower of Mechlin is for the lowlands of Brabant, the spires of Chartres for La Beauce, the "screen facades" of Brunswick, Halberstadt and Magdeburg for the plains of Lower Saxony, and the long roof-ridges and the lofty towers of Ely for the fenland of Cambridgeshire.

Something, too, is due to the fact that the houses dominated by the cathedral of Ribe are little more than cottages in height and appearance. The "city" is but a large village of picturesque meandering streets pleasantly mixedup with trees and streams, of which latter three surround the place. Ascending the north-western tower, and carrying the eye beyond the limits of the houses, meadow-land,

II Cathedrals Of Norway, Etc

green as the Emerald Isle, dotted with, substantial homesteads and streaked with white roads, will be seen to constitute the landscape in every direction. Looking due westwards we discern, at the distance of about three miles, the North Sea, and the smoke of the steamers in the harbour of thriving little Esbjserg.

Ribe Cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, is a noble structure in whose Romanesque portions, notably the apse and the western facade, a very strong Rhenish influence is perceptible. Begun in 1 1 34, it was completed in n 60, and was originally covered, at any rate as regards the nave, with a flat roof of wood, which, in consequence of a fire, was rebuilt in stone, together with the clerestory, towards the middle of the thirteenth century and in the pointed style then prevalent. The north-western tower, and the chapels which gable out of the Romanesque nave aisles, are much later additions, and of red brick, whereas the early portions are built of stone laid in oblong blocks so small as to give the idea of brick, and dressed with grey, white and pink granite. The latter material is used on the exterior for the western doorway; for those in the transepts, for the basement of the apse, and for some of the decorative features; and in the interior for the nave arcades, for the piers supporting the four great arches at the crossing, and in the small, regularly disposed blocks which, so pleasantly relieving the great transverse arches of vaulting in both nave and aisles, recall the ironstone of Northamptonshire.

The plan of Ribe Cathedral, which measures 220 feet from east to west, is that of a Latin cross, but with this peculiarity, that the apse immediately joins the transepts without the short aisleless limb usual in churches of its date.

The accompanying illustrations exonerate me from entering into a very minute description of this cathedral, either without or within, but, as may be seen from the view of the exterior, the building presents a very striking assemblage of parts.

It should, however, be observed that the nave projects considerably beyond the curiously dissimilar western towers; that the roof of this portion is a little higher than that of the rest of the church; and that we miss those arcades to the highest stage of the apse, which, borrowed from the Lombard churches of Bergamo and Pavia, and reproduced, not only in the Rhenish apses of Andernach, Bonn and Cologne, but in that of Swedish Lund, contribute so highly to the general effect. Otherwise the apse at Ribe is identical in design and construction with the examples above named.

One grand western tower appears to have been contemplated, probably on the motif of those at Neuss and Werden in Rhenish Prussia. Such a tower, with the large internal dimensions of thirty-seven feet, and a short transept projecting from its north and south sides, would have produced an effect of uncommon grandeur. Subsequently, the idea of such a central tower was abandoned in favour of a pair, covering, and projecting slightly beyond, what are now the inner aisles. The lower portion of the north-western tower may be of First Pointed date, but the upper part is of late and inferior workmanship. The proportions, however, are very fine, and its outline contrasts very singularly with that of the south-western steeple, which, although, no doubt, originally intended, has only been built within the last twenty years. Each side of it is sharply gabled, and the whole is crowned by one of those

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low quadrilateral spires so frequently met with in the early thirteenth-century churches of Rhenish Germany.

The square portion of the western fagade at Ribe has two tiers of shallow arched recesses. In the central recess of the lower tier is a fine round arched doorway built of variously hued granite. As this portal has escaped restoration, it forms quite a picture with the boldly sculptured capitals of its slender recessed shafts. The pointed arch makes its appearance in this facade, and this fact, taken in conjunction with the presence of an octofoiled circle in the centre of the upper tier of arcades, tends to the assumption that this space between and beyond the towers was a subsequent addition to the original plan of the cathedral.

Each transept has a fine Romanesque doorway of granite surmounted by a triangular pediment. In the tympanum of the southern portal is sculptured the Descent from the Cross, the group including figures of the Virgin, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and St John, all treated in a very Byzantine-Romanesque manner.

The triangular pediment encloses a representation, equally archaic, of "The Heavenly City: the New Jerusalem," in which figures of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, seated, and surrounded by the evangelistic symbols, are the most conspicuous. Our Lord holds a short hand-cross, the stem of which is grasped by the Virgin. Below these two principal effigies, and represented as looking up to them, is a row of small figures of kings and churchmen. Above the former is inscribed Civitas Jerusalem, and on scrolls to the right and left the following texts, of course in Latin: "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the; Lord" (Isaiah ii, 3), and "Blessed are the poor

H in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven " (St Matthew v, 3).

The door itself, modern and of bronze, is divided into forty-five square panels, of which six in the centre, forming a Greek cross, are enriched with small groups. The head of the cross contains the Betrayal in Gethsemane; in the centre, and in the arm on either side, the Entry into Jerusalem is illustrated in three groups; while in the panel forming the foot is the Washing of the Disciples' Feet. Below this another panel encloses the sacred monogram, I.H.S.

On the eastern side of the south transept is a small doorway, whence, if it should chance to be open, as it was on the occasion of my visit, though guarded by a wicket, one of the finest views across the interior of the cathedral can be obtained.

Next to its grand proportions and air of dignified severity, the great charm of the interior of Ribe Cathedral lies in its natural colouring.

Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the white wall spaces of the nave, and the rich, warm hues of the granite used for the piers and arches, the shafts of the triforium arcades, and for the banding of the great pointed arches which span the nave transversely and collect the arcades and windows of the triforium and clerestory into pairs.

Massive oblong piers with very simple capitals and low bases identical in shape and size carry the six plain round-headed arches which divide the nave from its aisles.* Over these is the triforium, not a mere passage between

*Some remains of the ancient painting with which this church was, no doubt, profusely adorned, may be discerned on these piers.

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its arcades opening to the nave and a lean-to roof, but a spacious gallery, as in our three great East Anglian minsters of Ely, Norwich and Peterborough. At Ribe the three arcades composing the openings are of equal height and contained beneath a round-headed and slightly recessed arch, whose tympanum is ornamented cheekywise. The clerestory windows are what may be called equilateral spherical triangles, having their bases straight. They would be much improved by the insertion of tracery, composed, let us say, of three cusped circles, as at Lichfield. In their present state, glazed in small square panes and deficient in stained glass, these clerestory windows in the nave of Ribe Cathedral can hardly be pronounced graceful.

Four arches span the nave proper transversely and gather up its length into three great domically-vaulted compartments.* The treatment of these arches differs, however, and deserves some study. In one instance this arch dies off into the wall at the triforium stage of the elevation; in two it springs from the capitals of the responds or half piers at either end of the nave; while in the remaining one it starts directly from a shaft corbelled off just above the capital of the pier between the second and third of the six bays into which the length of the nave is divided. It should be observed that the transverse arch between the second and third of these great domical vaults has another arch attached to it with a circular moulding. This added arch starts from corbelled shafts, as do the ribs which divide the domes into eight cellular compartments. f

*In addition to these there is another great vaulted bay, but aisleless, since it is comprised between the western towers.

fin architectural phraseology these vaults at Ribe would be styled octofartite.

The northern transept vault has only three cells, while that of the southern is more complex, slender corbelled shafts being introduced between the two round-headed windows on its east, south and west sides to carry the additional ribs. The treatment of the vaulting in this transept is reminiscent of that in the square-ended choir of St Cross, Winchester, and either one or the other of these examples would appear to have influenced Mr James Brooks when designing his stately brick-vaulted chancel for St Columba's, Kingsland Road, one of a remarkable group of churches built forty years ago in North London.

A very simple ribless dome covers the crossing, and a half dome of equally severe character the apse, which is lighted by three round-headed windows surmounting a continuous shallow arcade. Polychromy has been applied to the vaulting shafts of the nave with good effect, but the portions of the church beyond the nave have as yet been untouched by the artist. I never saw an interior where I think a profusion of bright and strongly contrasted colours would be more in place. The wall spaces above the four great arches at the crossing and the dome which covers it are a peculiarly advantageous field for the display of prominent hues, while the apse admits of the richest polychrome. Doubtless, such works as have been carried out at the, in some respects, analagous cathedral of Viborg are in contemplation at Ribe.

There are no aisles to the transepts, but in the eastern wall of each is a semicircular recess under a pedimented arch, which is supported by pillars, whose capitals recall the Corinthian of Classic days. This arrangement may be compared with that in the cathedral at Lund, where a

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similar recess is found on the western and eastern sides of both transepts.

The chapels opening out of the nave aisles are uninteresting specimens of Danish Middle Pointed. Each chapel has, externally, a separately gabled roof, and is lighted by a window whose three pointed but uncusped lights touch the head of the containing arch, as may be seen in the illustration of the church at Mariboe. All this later work at Ribe, including the window tracery, is carried out in red brick, whitewashed on the inside.