The Middle Ages
The Church brought building in stone. Lund Cathedral, the parish churches of Gotland and Uppsala Cathedral show how Romanesque and Gothic came to the North – often in brick and often a few decades late.
The first stone churches were built in the 12th century, often by master builders with experience from the Rhineland, Lombardy or England. Lund Cathedral, where the first archbishop of the Nordic countries took his seat in 1103, is the chief work of the Romanesque, and in Västergötland stands Husaby church with its broad west tower.
Gothic arrived in the 13th century, in the Mälaren valley and southern Sweden usually in brick on north German models. A French master builder was engaged in 1287 for Uppsala Cathedral, the largest church in Sweden. The Bridgettine abbey church in Vadstena, consecrated in 1430, is built of limestone.
Gotland still has more than ninety medieval churches, and the town wall of Visby is among the best-preserved in Europe.