The Moesgaard Museum: the wooden church, the Vikings houses

Two houses and a church of the Vikings’ Age were reconstructed nearby the Moesgård Museum. The first house is the one of the Vikings’ Age from Hedeby, next to Schleswig (Danish: Sønderjylland or Slesvig). It is dated circa to 870 AD and interpreted as a family household. Another building is a reconstruction of the mine house of the Vikings’ Age in Aarhus, approximately dated to 900 AD. The mine houses are small buildings with a sick floor, dug by half into the ground.

 

They used to be made use of as dwellings or workshops. Behind the houses at a small hill the Vikings’ wooden church was put up, an ancestor of the stone church.

 

Christianity was officially established in Denmark circa in 965 AD, during the Vikings’ Age. The wooden churches, having been built all over the country, had been replaced by the stone ones, by the beginning of XII century. None of the authentic wooden churches has remained whole until nowadays, yet in 1960 next to actual church in Herning, not far from Randers, the floor and a pit by the uprights of the church were excavated.

Comparably to the stone churches, the wooden ones were very small – about 31 feet long and 15 feet wide. In addition, the wooden church in Herning left us a part of so called hammered beam - an aclinal bars, only under the housetop projection, holding the vertical planks. The plank from Herning was discovered in 1887, in the course of restoration of the present church walls. At the present day one can see it in the collection of the Copenhagen National Museum. The plank itself, according to the analysis of the annual tree rings, was dated circa to 1060 AD – i.e. a transitional period from the Vikings’ Age to the Middle Ages. A part of this plank provided us a lot of significant details concerning the lost wooden church construction and decoration. The beams of the wooden churches of the Vikings’ Age also were found all over Scandinavia.

 

The wooden church of  Herning was built of oak. Therefore, the wooden church in Moesgård is likely to have also been built of oak, being a favourite construction material of the Vikings’ Age. The work with a large beam used to be conducted by use of the adze – a kind of an axe  - which had a long tradition. The artisans of the Vikings’ Age were skillful at using this tool, and the adze is hitherto being used by the carpenters in the shipbuilding.

 

The roof  of shingle (about 1600 wooden planks) was made by the pattern of the remained roof, dated to XII century, having been found in Gottland. The dragons’ heads, decorating the pediments, are known by the other sources and remained images of the Vikings’ Age, and, besides, from the description of the Norwegian wooden churches dated to the later period. The prototype of the coiling serpents, carved over the door entrance, was a door lintel, having been found in Scania. The hammered beam at the wooden church was decorated by the coiling snakes, typical for the late Vikings’ Age – the dead spit of the carving of the Herning plank exterior side.

The remnants of the genuine painting of the red, yellow and black colours, remained at the Herning plank. This decorative combination was removed to the hammered bars of the reconstructed wooden church, whereas the same colours were made an experimental use in the other parts of the church, including the main entrance.

 

In the Herning wooden church the marks of the bell frame, which also was reconstructed in Moesgård, had been discovered. The church bell was moulded by the description of 900-years-old bell moulding – the dead spit of circa 800-years-old bell from Smollerup Church, next to Viborg.

 

One does not know anything about the Herning church  interior. Nevertheless, the wall pews and a rough ground floor of the reconstructed church in Moesgård – known according to the original wooden churches of the Middle Ages.

 

Photo: Marina V. Vorobyeva, 2008

The official web-site: http://www.moesmus.dk