Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/115

Rh BOOK V.

CHAPTER I. SCANDINAVIA. CONTENTS. Sweden—Norway—Denmark—Gothland—Round Churches—Wooden Churches.

one who has listened to all that was said and written in Germany before the late war about "Schleswig-Holstein Stamm verwandt," can very well doubt that when he passes the Eyder going northward he will enter on a new architectural province. He must, however, be singularly deficient in ethnographical knowledge if he expects to find anything either original or beautiful in a country inhabited by races of such purely Aryan stock. If there is any Finnish or Lap blood in the veins of the Swedes or Danes it must have dried up very early, for no trace of its effect can be detected in any of their architectural utterances; unless, indeed, we should ascribe to it that peculiar fondness for circular forms which is so characteristic of their early churches, and which may have been derived from the circular mounds and stone circles which were in use in Sweden till the end of the 10th century. The country, in fact, was only converted to Christianity in the reign of Olaf—Skol Konung—1001 to 1026; and then, and for a long time afterwards, was too poor and too thinly inhabited to require any architectural buildings, and when these came to be erected the dominant race was one that never showed any real sympathy for the art in any part of the world.

SWEDEN. The largest and most important monument in the province is the Cathedral of Upsala, though it can hardly be quoted as an example of Scandinavian art; for when the Swedes, in the end of the 13th century (1278), determined on the erection of a cathedral worthy of their country, they employed a Frenchman of the name of Etienne