Vaksala Church ( sv, Vaksala kyrka) is a medieval

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

church in the

Archdiocese of Uppsala The Archdiocese of Uppsala ( sv, Uppsala ärkestift) 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. Th ...

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the c ...

, 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. On the small uninhab ...

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 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 focuse ...

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 late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. 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 for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

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

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...

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 Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

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 ( phaneritic) 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 cools and solidifies under ...

and brick. 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 (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

. 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 frescos 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 made in Antwerp 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 is from 1805 and designed by

Olof Tempelman Olov (or Olof) is a Swedish form of Olav/Olaf, meaning "ancestor's descendant". A common short form of the name is ''Olle''. The name may refer to: * Per-Olov Ahrén (1926–2004), Swedish clergyman, bishop of Lund from 1980 to 1992 *Per-Olov Br ...

. 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 inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones d ...

, 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 Diocese of Uppsala Churches converted from the Roman Catholic Church to the Church of Sweden