- For Kristin Lavransdatter, the character in Sigrid Undset's book, Christ's Church in Nidaros was a "reflection of the glory of God's kingdom". Many have felt that the experience of beauty may produce an ethical challenge: "Now she saw how low she lay in the dust …".
Those who built the cathedral wished to create a space where heaven and earth would meet, and where pilgrims would see the greatness and the responsibility of being a human being.
Christ's Church - built on the grave of a Viking King
It was not the life Olav Haraldson lived that made him a saint, but rather his death. Through his defeat at the Battle of Stiklestad on 29 July 1030, an entire nation was eventually won over to the new faith in Christ.
Folklore about Olav tells of the profound, mysterious and life-giving relationship between impotency and power, between despair and hope, between death and life. The Cathedral brings to life the spiritual values which Saint Olav carried. The prime duty of a saint was to lead the way to Christ. His burial church was called Christ's Church in Nidaros.
A wooden chapel was built above Olav's grave immediately after he was named a saint on the 3rd of August 1031. Around AD 1070 Olav Kyrre founded the first Christ's Church in the same place. The high altar with the shrine of the King was placed where the King's grave had been.
However, the number of pilgrims rose and it was necessary to expand the church. Around AD 1150, work on the present transept was in progress. The person most thought of as the architect and builder of Nidaros Cathedral in its Gothic style is Øystein Erlendsson (Archbishop from 1161-1188). Born in the region, he was nevertheless a cosmopolitan, embodying European ideas and philosophies. He studied at the universities of France. On returning from his exile in England, an exile stemming from his disagreements with King Sverre, he initiated the construction of a Gothic Cathedral in 1183. Before his death he managed to finish the chapter house, and the octagon around the high altar was also started. It is generally assumed that the Cathedral in its Gothic style was finished around AD 1300.
Five times fires have ravaged the Cathedral, and five times it has been rebuilt. A major fire in 1531 ruined almost the entire west nave. When the great restoration work commenced in 1869, it was patterned on many of the places visited by Archbishop Øystein in his time. Hence, with his international outlook Øystein has become the very symbol of a Cathedral in the far North belonging to a whole family of European churches.
By visiting the Shrine of Saint Olav in Nidaros, or one of the many other Christian burial sites of saints, medieval pilgrims believed that they would be able to share in the saint's divine powers.
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