Our Adaptable Adventure - Looking for churches

The day afterwards, The Viking and I had reconciled ourselves with the idea of having had to leave Norway sooner than we wanted too. We had decided to make the best of our last day of our Scandinavian escapade.

The south of Sweden was the region we wanted to explore. First stop was Dalby:

View Larger Map

We particularly wanted to see the church of Dalby, which is the oldest stone church in Scandinavia. It was built in the 11th century, when this part of Sweden still belonged to Denmark. The town even became a religious centre and the (Danish) King’s Residence was built here too.

Unfortunately, when we arrived in Dalby, there were works going on at the church. I did take a couple of pictures of the exterior, but it was impossible to visit the interior. However, there was a notice at the entrance that if visitors wanted to see a similar church they should go to one of the neighboring villages.

I have to admit that The Viking and I are not sure of this anymore, but we think that it was the locality of Sjöbo:

View Larger Map

Sjöbo has five of these typical medieval Danish churches. I am not sure which one I photographed! I simply forgot to write down the name. On the other hand, when you look at the exterior and the interior of this church, you can see that it escaped the restorations that many other churches underwent in the 19th century. Absolutely magnificent are the frescoes that were discovered in recent years. These are quite unique, since in a lot of churches all ornamentation was simply removed after the installation of Lutheranism.

About these ads