Architecture in Skåne: From Lund Cathedral to the Turning Torso

Skåne has some of the oldest buildings in the Nordic countries and some of the most discussed in Sweden. Dalby Church, from around 1060, is probably Scandinavia's oldest surviving stone church, and Lund Cathedral, begun in 1103, is Sweden's most important Romanesque building. From the 19th century there is Helgo Zettervall's University Building in Lund; from the 20th century Sven Markelius's Concert Hall in Helsingborg and Sigurd Lewerentz's St Peter's Church in Klippan; and from the 21st century Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso in Malmö. Skåne was Danish until 1658, and that shows in the architecture.

Facts

The Danish Middle Ages: Dalby and Lund

In the Middle Ages Skåne belonged to Denmark. When the country was divided into new dioceses around 1060, Dalby became for a short time a bishop's seat, and Dalby Church was built then. It is probably the oldest stone church in Scandinavia still standing. Beneath the chancel there is a crypt with groin vaults on short, sturdy columns, reminiscent of the crypt in Lund.

In 1103 Lund became the archiepiscopal see for the whole of the North, and construction of the cathedral began. It was built in sandstone from the area around Höör on models from the Rhineland and Lombardy, and stonemasons from there seem to have worked here. The altar of the crypt was consecrated in 1123 and the high altar in 1145. Look for the apse in the east with the dwarf gallery beneath the roof, the crypt with the column where, according to legend, the giant Finn stands petrified, and the astronomical clock Horologium mirabile Lundense from the 15th century.

The cathedral became a model for many churches in Skåne and Denmark, and the landscape is rich in Romanesque village churches with sturdy west towers. When Skåne became Swedish in 1658 and Lund University was inaugurated in the cathedral in 1668, the building also became part of the Swedification.

Fortresses and manors

Skåne is also a landscape of fortresses and manors. Glimmingehus in Österlen, built in 1499 for the knight Jens Holgersen Ulfstand, is one of the best-preserved medieval fortresses in the Nordic countries: a tall, closed stone house with thick walls and stepped gables. In the 16th and 17th centuries many Scanian manors were rebuilt as Renaissance castles surrounded by moats. The largest Renaissance castle by the sound is Kronborg in Helsingør, on the Danish side, described in the guide to architecture in Copenhagen.

The 19th century: Zettervall's Lund

In the 19th century Lund Cathedral was in poor condition. From the 1860s Helgo Zettervall led a thorough restoration, in which the west façade with its towers was pulled down and rebuilt in an idealised Romanesque form. The result has been criticised for being more 19th century than medieval, but it shaped Swedish restoration for decades. What you see today of the west side of the cathedral is thus Zettervall's image of the Romanesque.

At the same time Zettervall designed the Lund University Building, built in 1878–1882 in Lundagård Park. It is a light Renaissance palace with a festive assembly hall for the university's ceremonies, and on the roof rest four sphinxes meant to guard hidden knowledge. The building shows how Historicism used the forms of the Renaissance to express education.

Modernism: Markelius and Lewerentz

Helsingborg held an architectural competition for a concert hall in 1925, and Sven Markelius won. He altered the proposal as Functionalism made its breakthrough, and the Helsingborg Concert Hall, inaugurated in 1932, became one of the first large public Functionalist buildings in Sweden: white and smooth, with a tall concert hall and a glazed foyer facing the town. Two years earlier Markelius had been one of the leading architects of the Stockholm Exhibition.

Sigurd Lewerentz's last church, St Peter's Church in Klippan, was built in 1962–1966. Everything is of dark brick, and no brick has been cut. In the middle of the almost square, very dark space stands a cruciform steel column carrying the roof, the windows are sheets of glass screwed to the outside of the wall without frames, and the font is a large mussel shell above a crack in the floor. Architects from all over the world travel to Klippan to see it. Lewerentz's first church in the same spirit, St Mark's Church, stands in Stockholm.

Malmö and the Øresund: the Turning Torso

Around 2000, Malmö was transformed from a shipyard town into a town of knowledge and housing. The shipyard area in Västra Hamnen became a new district, and the Bo01 housing exhibition was held there in 2001. In the middle of the area rises the Turning Torso, a residential tower by Santiago Calatrava based on his own sculpture of a twisting body. The building consists of nine cubes of five storeys each, twisted so that the top one has turned ninety degrees relative to the bottom. Along one side runs a steel skeleton that Calatrava compared to a spine.

When it was completed in 2005, at 190 metres it was the tallest building in Scandinavia, and it is clearly visible from Copenhagen and the Øresund Bridge. It immediately became Malmö's symbol. You can compare its height with other buildings in the guide to the world's tallest buildings.

All the buildings are on the map below. The drawing of the basilica shows the parts of Lund Cathedral, and more Swedish churches are compared in the guide to Sweden's most famous churches. The Middle Ages in Skåne can be found in Swedish history under the Middle Ages.

What to look for

Exercise

What in Lund Cathedral is not medieval but dates from the 19th century?