Roskilde - Brick Gothic. Incidentals Inside and Out

Roskilde Cathedral

Small doors, locked with grates over the window openings, lead somewhere beneath. Crypts for saints? Did some religious live there? We recall seeing a reference to a saint's burial place, and think this may be one of them.

Small door, Roskilde Cathedral, DK

Brick gothic exterior, Roskilde Cathedral, DK

The brickwork has a warm, inviting feel.  Compare the cold awe of the French gothic gray stone.

Rear side view, Roskilde Cathedral, DK

Denmark appears to be a nation without slums.  It also is a nation of excellent food.

1.  Scharfe's Bakery

Roskilde DK: A regular town, not a museum. Scharfe's Bakery.

Denmark:  Graffiti patrols.  For all the graffiti we see, there is usually someone right there cleaning it up.  Seldom does it accumulate, layer on layer. Here is the cloister wall, behind the Cathedral, in a Dominican monastery or convent area.

Roskilde: coping with graffiti, DK

For a fine overview of Denmark, its history and impact; and a photo gallery of sampled spots, visit ://www.caspercomsci.com/pages/denmark.htm/

Roskilde - Carved Stories. Pictorial Scripture.

A medieval illiterate could learn the basic stories of the new Christian religion just by peering closely at the scenes surrounding the choir area:  Great Personages might run the place and generate forceful dogma and fear if someone's beliefs did not conform; but ordinary craftsmen with extraordinary skills added expression, persuasion, dimension beyond dogma. See the colors, the angles of the heads, often quizzical looks, fingers pointing to the lesson to be learned:

Stroll here:

Annunciation, carving, Roskilde CathedralResurrection aftermath; Mary tells the story, carving, Roskilde Cathedral

Or is this mere general rejoicing? Have to ask the preacher.

The birth; Mary nursing, lying down; carving, Roskilde Cathedral

Creation, Eve fully formed, being lifted out; carving, Roskilde Cathedral

No removal of mere rib here, and shaping after. Instead, the human looks both-and, androgynous or perhaps whatever, with Eve just being separated out, a full being to begin with.

Cain kills Abel? carving, Roskilde Cathedral

But the victim looks like a woman. Is Adam beating Eve, for which he is banished? See all there is to think about during the sermon.

Job afflicted, carving, Roskilde Cathedral

Moses, with the erroneous horns, carving, Roskilde Cathedral

Who says scriptural interpretation is infallible. For centuries a mistranslation led people to believe that Moses got horns on Sinai. Instead, he came down with rays of light. So much for believing just because you are told. Vet. Pictorial Scripture.  Highlights even where people were wrong.

See another set of story-panels when we get to the Sonderborg Castle Chapel. The theology of an Adam when divided out of the human into the man, and Eve as divided out into the woman, look alike in ways we think should be different.  Have we changed the story, and our own selection process apart from Originalismisticmystic?

Roskilde Cathedral: Who is Buried There. Cathedral of St. Luke

Cathedral of St. Luke, Roskilde, Denmark

Roskilde Cathedral hold the remains of so many notables that merely taking names will be confusing.

1.  Christopher.

Who is this little Duke Christopher, the boy-ish fellow with the helmet by his head with the horns?

Duke Christopher, brother of Margrete I, interred at Roskilde Cathedral, helmet with horns

Run for help to Wikipedia for an overview://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Burials_at_Roskilde_Cathedral/  There is a Christopher of Bavaria listed there, click and find that he lived 1416-1448 - does that make him too old for this small fellow?  Or is he over-idealized?  This article does confirm that Christopher of Bavaria is buried at Roskilde. But another site shows this same sculpted form (see the same belting) and describes a grown man's life, at ://www.mediafarmdev.dk/gammel/www.roskildedomkirke.dk/uk/index.html/  Fair use thumbnail:

Perhaps they are the same, but our impression was of a child.

If a child, as we thought, whose son is this?  Go back to ://www.mediafarmdev.dk/gammel/www.roskildedomkirke.dk/uk/index.html/ and find there that this is Duke Christopher in this spot near Margrete but one who died in 1363 and is the brother of Margrethe, or Margrete I. We will go with that, until we are persuaded otherwise. Sites often conflict. Vet it all.

2.  The Troll!

There are surrounding chapels with families' members buried or in raised caskets inside, like this one for the aptly named Trolle family - a troll in the ironwork gate, a masterpiece of grating.

Trolle Family, interment chapel, Roskilde Cathedral

Meet the family's illustrious history at ://www.algonet.se/~sylve_a/e_tronas.htm/  A beheaded troll is part of the family coat of arms.  In the church,the troll is headed, and demonic-whimsical.  The gratings were apparently done and signed by one Caspar Fincke, see ://www.mediafarmdev.dk/gammel/www.roskildedomkirke.dk/uk/index.htmlThe whole family is now gone/extinct, see ://books.google.com/books?id=TTMMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=Trolle+family+Denmark&source=bl&ots=Rke8idP_ZT&sig=NsrdSBmT2VxuRd7fBTM9tSndC6o&hl=en&ei=9IyPTNO_EYH58Aayy82RDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Trolle%20family%20Denmark&f=false/.


3.  Roskilde's History:

Roskilde Cathedral dates from the 12-13th Centuries, and the first Gothic Cathedral in Denmark to be built of the now-everywhere brick. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/695
Wikipedia lines them up:  See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Burials_at_Roskilde_Cathedral

4.  The Knight.

Now meet this fellow in battle sartorial splendor:  Is this Saint George without the Dragon?

Saint George sans Dragon, Roskilde Cathedral

St. George:

He defeated the dragon, at a Libyan town, who had required a child a day to be devoured. The people complied, and even the King's fair daughter was in line. There she stood, as the dragon stirred itself toward her. Enter St. George! Saved! See //www.kellscraft.com/stgeorge.html/  He is on the clock at the church. Is this also George, on the elevated stand?

Christian IV (?) set up meetings in the Knight's Chapel a

5.  Harold I - Harold Bluetooth.

Also spelled Harald Bluetooth.  Son of Old King Gorm. Harold Bluetooth Gormsen or Gormson. King of Denmark and Norway. Ancient wooden palace remains recently found, longhouses, and a building structure beneath the Jelling Church, perhaps the great hall, near where also rune stones and Gorm lie. See ://www.cphpost.dk/culture/culture/122-culture/49329-archaeologists-uncover-harald-bluetooths-royal-palace.html/

911-987 AD.

There - he is inside the column itself, so it is said.

Harold Bluetooth interred in the column, perhaps, Harold I Bluetooth, Roskilde Cathedral, DK

 That is Margrete I laid out in front, with Bluetooth behind and represented on the wall encasing the pillar. See the life of a man in the middle, with Christianizing force on one hand, and fine pagan tradition on the other, at ://www.biographybase.com/biography/Bluetooth_Harold.html

The Danes remained faithful to their old ways for centuries after some leaders, like Harald, became Christian. Conversion was by force, after a battle defeat; not by the Founder's example or quiet persuasion. Voluntariness need not apply. Be Christian or die. Like forced marriage first, hope love in some form arrives later. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes.

The Bluetooth interface: named for this Bluetooth; and the HB letters form the logo.

6.  Tomb of the Ghost Horse

There is an ambulatory around behind the altar area at Roskilde Cathedral, with this curious but indecipherable slab. Whoever is beneath, or whatever, is anonymous, but given a place of honor. Why called the Tomb of the Ghost Horse?

Tomb, Ghost Horse, Roskilde Cathedral, DK

One perhaps-not-reliable culty site says there is a Scandinavian tradition, also in Northern England (Scandinavians ran that for a while) that a horse is to be buried alive and then its spirit will protect the treasure, oversee the peace of the graveyard, protect the living, as a luck-amulet might. See, if you must, ://www.northofthemoon.com/2008/12/corpselamb-hellhorse-and-gravesow_30.html/.