Roskilde Cathedral
The city of Roskilde was the largest and the first to have it all – the day’s fashions, new trends and the latest in architecture. It was a place where those in the know convened and congregated. The cathedral, with spires that strive toward the heavens, bears the history of the monarchs’ lives and deaths.
by the Director of Roskilde Museum Frank Birkebæk
It can be seen from all points of the compass as you approach the city … and the cathedral’s distinctive profile is familiar to most Danes. For almost 800 years, Roskilde Cathedral has occupied a significant place in both the landscape and in Denmark’s history: initially, as the main church of Denmark’s most powerful bishopric and later on, as the church for all royal funerals.
Modern in its bricks and in its French Gothic style
It was one of history’s great personages, Bishop Absalon, who took the initiative, sometime around 1170, to build a church in brick on the very site where, it appears plausible to assume, King Harald I Bluetooth had already built a wooden church. Between Harald I Bluetooth’s first wooden church and this stone church, there might have been, from what we can surmise, a few other wooden churches and maybe even another earlier stone church.
Bricks happened to be the day’s most modern building material and the building style, at the outset, was Romanesque. However, early along in the construction process, a change in the approach was made in order to deploy the Gothic style, which was the great innovation in architecture at the time, a style that had been introduced in France precisely during these years. Since the Reformation in 1536, the cathedral has been the Danish kings’ funeral church.
Bluetooth’s show of power
However, the cathedral’s history has its beginnings before Absalon. In fact, it begins 200 years earlier, in Jelling. On the large Jelling runic stone, King Harald I Bluetooth proudly tells that it was he who has gathered the Danish realm together and made the Danes Christian.
King Harald’s new kingdom included the area that comprises, by and large, present-day Denmark and southern Sweden and he felt a need to find a place that was more centrally situated than Jelling from where he could govern the realm. He chose to settle at the head of the Roskilde Fjord and to build a church there. He called this new place Roskilde.
The city starts to move forward
Roskilde was the country’s first “modern” city. In contrast to most of the earliest cities, it did not expand on the basis of thriving trade relations. It was rather laid out from its very inception as a center for power and administration. King Harald presumably constructed a royal residence just west of the first church.
It is believed that Harald himself was buried inside this church. Both the royal residence and the church were constructed of wood. However, no traces of either the residence or the wooden church have been found today.
East of the church, a bishop’s residence was evidently built for the bishop at the time. Since the year 1020, there has always been a bishop domiciled in the city. Roskilde quickly became the country’s wealthiest and most powerful bishopric.
A city with growing pains
The town, which is situated on the banks of the fjord, continued to grow at a rapid pace. By the beginning of the twelfth century, there were approximately 13 parish churches in the city.
When, around 1150, Roskilde was enclosed by an earthwork and a moat of more than three kilometers in length, the total territory of the town was as much as 70 hectares – and Roskilde was suddenly a modern metropolis, where the nation’s elite congregated and where new trends were introduced.This applies to everything from new trends in clothing and kitchen utensils, clay vessels, for example to architecture. The earliest Sankt Jørgensbjerg church, dating from the middle of the eleventh century, is presumably the very first stone edifice that was built in the country.
Later on, during the Middle Ages, five abbeys/convents/monasteries and three charitable institutions – the day’s hospital, orphanage and poorhouse – were established in the city. The number of both churches and monasteries in Roskilde is greater than in any other Danish city.
Where scholars congregate
Roskilde is also a center for learning. Very early on, a cathedral school was founded, which later on – albeit without success – came to be positioned among candidates for becoming Denmark’s first university.
A three-aisled brick cathedral
With both the cathedral and the bishop as the center, a learned, wealthy and very powerful priesthood arose in Roskilde, which set its mark on the nation’s history for three or four hundred years up until the time of the Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century.
However, the construction of Absalon’s large cathedral building, the domed church, was not completed during the renowned bishop’s lifetime but would first be brought to its consummation – and on an even more grandiose scale – by his successors.
We surmise that the church must have been finished by the end of the thirteenth century: a three-aisled brick cathedral with a steeple.
Burned down and resurrected
The cathedral is a living edifice. Through the ensuing centuries, many additions and annexes grew up around the large building. The two towers were erected in the fourteenth century but it was not until the seventeenth century that the distinctive spires were added. Porches and the chapter house were also added before the first chapel, the Epiphany Chapel or King Christian I’s Chapel, was built in 1464.
Later on, the following parts of the church complex were constructed: during the seventeenth century, King Christian IV’s Chapel; in the eighteenth century, King Frederick V’s Chapel; at the beginning of the twentieth century, King Christian IX’s Chapel and most recently, in 1985, King Frederick IX’s cemetery was laid out outside the church.
During the Reformation, the church was stripped of much of its rich decoration and equipment and there were also a couple of large conflagrations, in 1282 and 1443, which took their toll on the cathedral. On top of this, there was another fire in 1968, when, unfortunately, the Queen Margrethe I Spire, which was originally built in the fifteenth century, burned down, together with large sections of the roof construction.
Cathedral filled with treasures
Today, the Roskilde Cathedral stands forth as one of Denmark’s most well maintained churches. Inside the vaulted church, there are many examples of sterling quality ecclesiastical inventory: the large three-winged altarpiece, for example, is a painted and gilded Dutch woodcarving from around 1560 which, with its different figures and representative stories, describes the Passion of Jesus Christ.
The Devil’s wrought iron latticework balustrade
Casper Fincke’s wrought iron latticework balustrade positioned in front of King Christian IV’s Chapel (dating from the 1600s) is also interesting. In the grating, you can see a good many fabulous beings romping about. For this very reason, it has been said that it was the Devil himself who forged the grille.
The canons’ chairs in the chancel date from 1420. The canons, who were in the employ of the diocese, were able to use these chairs in the chancel during the service, where they otherwise had to stand up for long stretches of time. The seats, which can conveniently be turned up, were accordingly fitted with a small support structure on their under-side, upon which the canons could find some repose while standing up.
Inside the Epiphany Chapel, we find the King’s Column, where the physical heights of various monarchs have been marked out. Some of the measurements, however, must be regarded with a grain of salt – as manifestations of a wish for more royal clout than the reality of the situation would otherwise dictate. King Christian I, for example, is delineated as being almost 2.20 meters tall and Peter the Great of Russia is delineated as being 2.08 meters tall.
Inside the cathedral, you can also find the renowned, rare and well-preserved historic organ, the Raphaëlis Organ. The oldest parts of this instrument date from the fifteenth century, while the façade of its baroque casing was created during in the seventeenth century.
Just behind the altar lies Queen Margrethe I’s sarcophagus, dating from the 1400s. In 1412, the queen was buried in the Sorø Abbey Church. Already in the following year, the king who succeeded Margrethe retrieved her remains and transferred them to Roskilde. Her coffin was then placed in what was then the newly designed chancel.
The sepulchral chapels
The cathedral’s earliest construction-related history is unclear. However, the church’s connection to the Danish kings (and two queens) is not at all obscure.
It has been said that King Harald I Bluetooth was buried inside his church. However, we have never been able to find his grave. Subsequently a number of the Danish monarchs were interred inside the cathedral and since the time of the Reformation, it has been the Danish royal house’s official funeral church.
The sepulchral chapels in the cathedral contain the burial places for twenty kings and seventeen queens. The chapels are all eminent examples of their respective building eras’ architectural idioms and they serve to render the cathedral a unique, living edifice, which has been undergoing constant development and change throughout the course of its existence.
In the chapels’ decorations and sepulchral monuments, there are fine examples of the changing times’ various artistic tastes and capabilities. Inside the cathedral’s chapels, we learn not only about the Danish royal house’s history but are also afforded the chance to gain excellent insight into the nation’s art- and architecture-history.
The church as a World Heritage site
Today, the cathedral carries an unparalleled importance with respect to the Danes’ own sense about themselves as a people. At the same time, Roskilde Cathedral is actively in use as the local parish church for the city’s resident churchgoers.
The cathedral is a distinctive architectural and historical monument, which is exactly the same age as the Danish kingdom, and also occupies a central position in this realm’s history, all the way from its inception under King Harald I Bluetooth up until the present day.
In 1995, the Roskilde Cathedral was entered on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. The motivation for this was that the cathedral is the first Gothic building in Denmark. The church was built in red brick and both its architecture and building style have, from the time of its emergence, continued to inspire building construction throughout all of Scandinavia.
...three million fired clay bricks were used in the construction of Roskilde Cathedral. The location of the brick kilns that were used in manufacturing these items is known today.
... the cathedral has a famous clock, dating from the 1400s, with mechanical figurines. It portrays St. George slaying the dragon. He does so once every hour, as Per Døver strikes the hour and Kirsten Kimer strikes the little bell every quarter hour.
... genetic analysis of one single tooth has determined that the woman who is buried inside one of the cathedral’s piers near the altar cannot be Queen Estrid, as people have otherwise always believed to be the case.
... the cathedral has a green devil, which takes note of everyone who arrives late for the service or talks during the sermons. The little demon sits with the writing slate as the fresco on the wall in St. Birgitte’s Chapel (from circa 1470).
... during the Middle Ages, the city of Roskilde had thirteen other churches inside the ramparts and six more just outside.
As an integral feature of the Roskilde Cathedral, we find one of early Danish medieval architecture’s tremendous constructions, Absalon’s arch.The arch, which is often overlooked by people visiting the cathedral, connected – via its secret passage – the cathedral’s chancel and the now demolished bishop’s palace, formerly situated east of the church. The daring gesture of building an arch that supports a secret passage is foreign to our latitudes and arouses associations with the Mediterranean countries’ formidable strongholds and fortresses.
Despite the name of the arch, Bishop Absalon himself never actually passed through this corridor. In fact, it was one of his immediate successors in the post who, at some time during the first decades of the thirteenth century, took the initiative to construct the structure.
Equally ambitious as the secret passage’s arch itself is the building’s symbolism. Elevated high above the congregation, the bishop could wander back and forth, secluded and unconstrained, between his residence in the bishop’s palace and the cathedral’s sanctified space.
Absalon’s church was one of the first buildings in Denmark to be built in the new construction material, brick. It was sometime in the middle of the twelfth century that the art of baking clay for bricks had finally made its way from the south to Denmark.
Master builders were also affected by the latest in French architectural trends, which can be seen, among other places, on the church’s bottom floor, which has been preserved in its original Romanesque style, with the round-arched windows, while the top floor already bears the stamp of the more lively Gothic style, which burst upon the scene around the year 1200.
Marie Sophia Frederikke Dagmar was originally a Danish princess; she was the second daughter of King Christian IX, “Europe’s father-in-law.” She married Czar Alexander III of Russia and thus became the empress of Russia.
During the Russian Revolution, Dagmar fled to London but later on, she came home to Denmark.
Dagmar's life was overshadowed by the tragic death of her Russian family. In 1928, Dagmar was buried in Roskilde Cathedral alongside the Danish kings and queens. Many years later and after much extensive negotiation, the Danish and Russian governments came to an extraordinary agreement stipulating that Empress Dagmar would be reburied in Saint Petersburg. After an extraordinary memorial service held inside the Roskilde Cathedral in 2006, her remains were placed in repose and transported back to Saint Petersburg, where on September 28, 2006, Dagmar of Denmark, princess and empress, was once again laid to rest, this time by her husband’s side.
