Work begins on Lund Cathedral
In 1103 Lund becomes the archiepiscopal see for the whole of the Nordic region. A sandstone cathedral is built after models from the Rhineland and Lombardy, with a crypt, an apse and a dwarf gallery.
The Romanesque style arrived with the Church and gave the Nordic countries their first large stone buildings.
Lund was founded by Danish kings around 990, and Skåne belonged to Denmark for almost seven hundred years more. In the 11th century the Church in the Nordic countries was subject to the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, which made the Nordic kings dependent on a German prince of the Church. The Danish king Eric I Ejegod therefore worked for an archbishopric of his own, and in 1103 Asser was appointed the first archbishop of the North, with his seat in Lund. His ecclesiastical province comprised Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. The archbishopric required a church that could stand comparison with the cathedrals of Europe, and work on the new cathedral soon began next to an older church that had previously served as the cathedral.
Work started in the east with the chancel and crypt. The crypt was consecrated in 1123 and the high altar in 1145, under Archbishop Eskil. From the sources we know of the master builder Donatus, who probably had experience from Italy, and later Regnerus. The stone is a sandstone from the area around Höör. The forms – a tall apse with a dwarf gallery, the pillars in the crypt and the rich ornament – show links both with the imperial cathedrals of the Rhineland, such as Speyer and Mainz, and with Lombardy. Beneath the vaults of the crypt there is a pillar that, according to legend, is the giant Finn, turned to stone when the church was completed. At the beginning of the 15th century the church acquired its astronomical clock, which after restoration still runs and plays.
Lund soon lost part of its ecclesiastical province: Norway received its own archbishopric at Nidaros in 1152–1153, and Sweden its own in Uppsala in 1164, although the archbishop of Lund long retained his position as primate of Sweden. After the Reformation in 1536 the cathedral became Lutheran, and in 1658 Skåne became Swedish through the Treaty of Roskilde. By then the church was in poor condition. In the second half of the 19th century it was thoroughly restored by Helgo Zettervall, who rebuilt the west front and towers in what he considered the correct Romanesque style. His work was highly controversial and contributed to Swedish restoration later becoming more cautious. The cathedral long influenced the building of other churches in Skåne.