Here’s something one of my Facebook friends brought to my attention. The Viking Museum at Ribe, Denmark, has unveiled its recreation of what they think a 9th Century Viking church in Denmark would have looked like. It is not – as you can see – exactly what you’d expect. And by you, of course, I mean me.
I’ve never bothered to describe Father Ailill’s church in detail in my Erling books. I assume it was built of wood, and I conceived of it of being similar to the average Viking house. In Hailstone Mountain, I describe it as having at least one tapestry hanging on the wall. It has an altar in front. Pews were not used in those days. I’ve kept it vague.
But here come these Danes now with their bright painted walls. I’m reminded of the church at Åkra, near Skånevik, Norway, an ancestral church of mine I visited two years ago. (Picture above.) It’s not as old as the Viking Age, but pretty old. There was one place where restorers discovered a bit of wall painting underneath a door frame, over the top of the sacristy door. They left that section of frame hinged, so you can lift the piece of wood and see the painting below. They believe it showed a scene of Samson killing the lion.
In any case, I do have quibbles. The brightness of the photos in the article should not be taken to indicate what churchgoers saw in the Viking Age. The building would have been illuminated mostly by lamps. There would have been a lot of shadows. The brightness of the images would have been necessary in part (I think) to make them visible at all in the general gloom.
Speaking of light, I’m curious about the windows in this reconstruction. My own understanding is that glass windows, in that period, were rare and extremely expensive. I expend quite a few words, in my work in progress, The Baldur Game, in having Father Ailill describe, on a visit to England, how amazed he is to see a modestly large glass window in the palace at Winchester. And Erling is quite proud of one small window in one of his halls. I imagined no windows at all in Ailill’s church.
However, the people at Ribe are experts. They undoubtedly know a lot more than I do. (Though I’m not sure Norwegian churches would necessarily have followed Carolingian fashion.)
In any case, those windows look pretty extravagant to me. I wonder what archaeological evidence there is for them.