Bodil Kirke

Bodil Kirke, Bornholm:
Romanesque nave with choir and apse (covered in gray)

Bodil Kirke: Tower with a gable added later, as well as an extension

Bell tower away from the church

The Sankt Bodil Kirke is a Romanesque church on the island of Bornholm , which was enlarged at the beginning of the 20th century. The church is located 3.5 km west of Nexø , about halfway to Aakirkeby and is dedicated to the English saint Botulf .

History and architecture

In 1530 the name of the church was changed to the maiden name Bodil , although there is no holy Bodil.

The church was built around 1200 and originally consisted of a nave , choir and apse . The apse has the original semi-domed vault, the choir and nave have a flat wooden ceiling from 1911.

The mighty four-story tower made of meter-thick walls was added later, but it was still in Romanesque times. Foundations in the ground show that the tower was originally intended to extend further west and have a square floor plan. The main floor of the tower is divided lengthways into two rooms, each with a barrel vault, which are connected by two arcades and each open to the ship through an arcade. It is assumed that the tower, like the Scandinavian round churches, also served as protection against predatory attacks.

The vestibule dates from the 16th century. In the vestibule there are two rune stones and tablets that remind us that 251 and 186 people died of the plague in the parish in 1618 and 1654 , respectively.

The separately standing bell tower with its two floors made of stone is part of the churchyard wall and was also the gate to the churchyard; originally it served more for defense than to ring bells. The current half-timbered bell storey dates from the 17th century.

In the years from 1897 until the final restoration in 1910-11, a heated dispute broke out over the fate of the church. The provost, the local architect Mathias Bidstrup and certainly people from the Ministry of Churches and Education did not consider an expansion of the church possible; They wanted to keep the old church as a ruin and build a new, larger church elsewhere, but the parish wanted to keep its old church by all means. Therefore, in 1898, Mathias Bidstrup submitted the proposal to add a north transept. Only after the Danish National Museum had placed the church under monument protection and paid part of the renovation costs, the transept was added in 1910-11 and the whole church was thoroughly renovated. The tower and vestibule were provided with a stepped gable .

During the renovation, four coins were found under the floor of the nave: a coin of unknown origin (12th century?) And one each from Stralsund (14th century), from Hamburg (approx. 1400) and from Rostock (1550–1562). Furthermore, five rune stones (called Bodilsker Stene ) were discovered in the masonry of the church , two of which are placed in the vestibule of the church.

inner space

The east wall of the nave consists of the high Romanesque choir arch and two side apses in which, before the Reformation, there were side altars. The west wall of the ship opens onto the tower with two low arcades. In front of the central pillar of these arcades stands the old Romanesque baptismal font from Gotland made of gray limestone, which is no longer in use. The former altarpiece by Jørgen Roed from 1856, which shows Christ on the way to Emmaus , hangs above the baptismal font .

Today's atar and the carved crucifix on it as well as the new baptismal font are from the renovation in 1911.

The renaissance pulpit (around 1600) is made of wood. Its four fields show reliefs of the evangelists and their symbols.