The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim. Architectural and Ritual Constructions in their European Context

Sammendrag

Despite the apparent fact that churches, including cathedrals, are constructed for specific purposes, namely to provide a physical frame for the execution of the various rites and acts demanded by the Christian cult and liturgy, such aspects have rarely been seriously considered in the scholarly research on Scandinavian medieval architecture. The monuments have usually been treated primarily as art historical and archaeological objects, with the main interest directed towards their building history, including possible international connections as regards formal characteristics, and sometimes also towards the buildings as manifestations of political, secular and/or ecclesiastical, processes. An ambitious effort to compensate for this lack of a more comprehensive view of the churches in their totality, i.e. as built structures providing room for cult and ritual, is made in the anthology The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim. Architectural and Ritual Constructions in their European Context. In altogether eight articles plus an introduction, various manifestations of medieval cult and liturgy are examined in relation to the grand Gothic cathedral of Trondheim. The volume is the outcome of a conference in Trondheim in 2004, co-arranged by the Centre for Medieval Studies at NTNU (the Norwegian University of Technology and Science) and the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals at the University of Copenhagen.