Nidaros Domkirke
Nidaros domkirke or Nidaros cathedral, is by far and away Trondheim's most famous and revered symbol. That's saying a lot for a town that was founded in 997. The church is the northernmost gothic cathedral in Europe...but the services are now all Lutheran! But Lutherans being what they are, they've invited other denominations to use this space, including Catholics, in spite of the country's history of abolishing Catholicism in 1537. A mere 450 years later, Pope John Paul II conducted a service in the catheral during his visit to Norway in 1989.
The truth (dare I say dirty little secret) about every gothic cathedral is that it is built early in the Middle Ages, and then rebuilt time and again. Such is the case with Nidaros. The first church, a wooden one, was built in this area in 1030 to commemorate King Olav Haraldson, who introduced Christianity to Norway early in the 11th century. By 1070 the wooden church had been replaced with a stone one. The oldest still-standing parts of this first stone structure are vaulted chapels built in a Norman style in 1140. You can recognize them in the church because the arches over the doorways to the chapels are topped with chevrons. Construction continued through the 1100s to expand the church with bits and pieces of ancient walls and doorways still to be found today. Between 1200 and 1235, the addition of vaults and choirs required the construction of flying buttresses. Unfortunately, the buttresses were undersized for the work they had to do, a fact which has led to modern-day structural problems.
The next 800 years brought fires, the Black Death, the annexation of Norway by Sweden and then Denmark. The cathedral has its story to tell of those years. Even though the cathedral itself is made of stone, much of its interior and roof trusses are wood. At least six catastrophic fires have razed much of the structure's interior, and historical records show at least nine structures standing on this spot in the last 1,000 years, all recognizable as Nidaros, but all different. Nidaros' now-famous roof line, with towering copper spire, would be unrecognizable in 1860, when the main tower was significantly shorter. In 1869, the church was completely renovated -- a process that took, in the true spirit of cathedral building, 100 years. When the restoration began, only five medieval statues on the front of the building had survived. Beginning in 1933, Norwegian sculptors, including Gustav Vigeland, replaced the missing sculptures, one by one. It took 50 years to replace all 54. Hundreds of smaller sculptures -- gargoyles, human heads, crenulations -- have also been repaired or replaced.
We're not big on religion, but Nidaros is a beautiful place, a testament to humankind's need to be uplifted and to prevail -- in spite of time, catastrophe, and mortality. In fact, one of the most fascinating and spooky parts of the structure is the basement crypt, with 700 year old tombstones.