Qualla: Ribe Cathedral

Ribe Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arnoldius, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just before morning mass on Christmas Day 1283, the tower at the northwest corner of Ribe Cathedral came down - into the church, and into the streets around it. Several people were killed. Danish churches are usually described by what was added to them; Ribe is better understood by what fell off, burned down, flooded in, or got argued about. Nine hundred years of that, and the building still stands - still the parish church of a town of eight thousand, and still, by a wide margin, the best-preserved Romanesque structure in Denmark.

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Image: Arnoldius | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ribe Cathedral: Bells That Frightened the Land Spirits

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hjart, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first church here was timber, put up in 860 by Ansgar, the missionary monk from Hamburg who later became its archbishop. He had King Horik I's permission to build on the south bank of the river, across from the market - a remarkable concession from a pagan king who had burned...

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Image: Hjart | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ribe Cathedral: Stone That Had to Be Shipped In

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arnoldius, CC BY-SA 3.0. West Jutland is sand and marsh, so the twelfth-century builders imported their material: tufa, a soft volcanic stone shipped north from Germany. What went up was a Romanesque basilica of half-round arches under a flat timber ceiling, modelled on the churches of northern Germany. ...

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Image: Arnoldius | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ribe Cathedral: A King Poisoned, a King Avenged

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hjart, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two Danish kings lie here, and neither died peacefully. A chieftain remembered as Sorte Plov - Black Plough - killed Erik II, called Emune, at the Urnehoved assembly in July 1137, avenging a relative Erik had executed. Erik had made a great many: he had put his own brother Harald...

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Image: Hjart | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ribe Cathedral: The Commoners' Tower and the Waterline

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Szilas, CC0. The tower that replaced the one lost in 1283 was built on a different scale, and for a different purpose. Borgertaarnet, the Commoners' Tower, was finished in 1333 at 62 metres under a copper spire. The church used the lower floors; the town used the upper ones, as a record archi...

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Image: Szilas | CC0

Ribe Cathedral: Blue Horses in the Apse

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schorle, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Reformation reached Ribe in 1536; the cathedral closed, the monks were turned out, and the building was left to neglect until Hans Tausen arrived as its Lutheran bishop in 1542 - his statue stands at the foot of the Maria Tower. By 1560 the last Catholic altars and statues we...

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Image: Schorle | CC BY-SA 4.0