Vaksala Church () is a medieval

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

church in the

Archdiocese of Uppsala The Archdiocese of Uppsala () is one of the thirteen dioceses of the Church of Sweden and the only one having the status of an archdiocese. Lutheran archdiocese Uppsala is the seat of the Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala. The diocese, which has it ...

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

, Sweden. The church is considered one of the most unusual in the province of

Uppland Uppland is a historical province or ' on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland. It is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The name literally ...

History

The oldest parts of Vaksala Church, the tower and the western end of the church, were erected during the 12th century. Today the church is located in the outskirts of Uppsala city, but at the time of its construction – before the establishment of the

Diocese of Uppsala The Archdiocese of Uppsala () is one of the thirteen dioceses of the Church of Sweden and the only one having the status of an archdiocese. Lutheran archdiocese Uppsala is the seat of the Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala. The diocese, which has it ...

- the church was the centre of one of the hundreds of Uppland, close to the location of a

thing Thing or The Thing may refer to: Philosophy * An object * Broadly, an entity * Thing-in-itself (or ''noumenon''), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant * Thing theory, a branch of critical theory that focuses ...

and by a locally important road. A guild operated in the locality throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. Throughout the Middle Ages the church was expanded and rebuilt. The barrel vaulted

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colony, English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spen ...

was added during the 13th century; during the same century a new and larger

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

was built. The church was further enlarged and changed internally during the 14th century. During this time the church started to acquire its present, largely Gothic look, replacing the older Romanesque edifice. During the 15th century, two chapels were added to the church. The church spire dates from 1692 but seems to have replaced an older one of the same design. The exterior of the church was altered in 1810, when the crow-stepped gables that had adorned all the church's gables since the Middle Ages were removed. In 1929 a renovation was carried out, and another one in 1969.

Architecture

The exterior of the church is largely Gothic in appearance, but contains remains of the first, Romanesque church as well as a few later alterations. It is built of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

and

brick A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...

. As for the interior of the church, it is a single-aisled church with two side-chapels and without an

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

. The side chapels are unusual in that they were

vaulted In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

already during the 14th century; most of the churches in the vicinity did not receive proper brick vaults until the 15th century. The interior of the church is decorated with

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

s dating from several periods, some possibly made by Albertus Pictor. They were covered in whitewash during the 18th century and laid bare again during the 20th century but remain somewhat damaged. Among the furnishings, the unusually large, 16th-century carved and gilded

altarpiece An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, ...

made in

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

merits special mention. It is one of the largest of its kind in Sweden. There is also an unusual preserved Romanesque bench. A lot of the furnishings date from the 18th or 19th century; the façade for the

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

is from 1805 and designed by

Olof Tempelman Olof Samuel Tempelman (February 21, 1745 in Källstad, Östergötland – July 27, 1816 in Stockholm) was a Swedish people, Swedish architect and, from 1779, professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He was appointed royal architect in 1799 ...

. In the close vicinity to the church, a brick building dating from the 15th century and which may have served as a storage or, possibly, housed the local guild. A

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic alphabet, runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition of erecting runestones as a memorial to dead men began in the 4th centur ...

, the so-called

Vaksala Runestone The Vaksala Runestone, designated as U 961 under the Rundata catalog, is a Viking Age memorial runestone that is located close to Vaksala Church, near Uppsala, Sweden. Description The Vaksala Runestone is one of the approximately forty runeston ...

, stands in the churchyard.

References

External links

* {{Churches in Uppland 12th-century churches in Sweden Church frescos in Sweden Churches in Uppsala County Churches in the Archdiocese of Uppsala Churches converted from the Roman Catholic Church to the Church of Sweden Buildings and structures in Uppsala