Shortly before the earliest part of the Cathedral was built, Nidaros became the seat of an Archbishop whose metropolitan jurisdiction extended further than did that of any bishopric before. In 1151 Nicolas Breakspear, once it is said a beggar at St. Alban's, afterwards the only English pope,[33] came to set in order the affairs of the Northern Church. He arranged for the formation of a province that should include all Christians of Norwegian stock. The other sees in Norway (Bergen, Stavanger, Oslo (p. 95) and Hamar) were placed under the supervision of the Primate of Nidaros. Far over the sea his authority was likewise known, by bishops midst the British Isles, of Kirkwall in Orkney and of Sodor (or the Southern Isles[34]) and Man, by the Bishop of the Faroes, whose cathedral was at Kirkebö (p. [23]), by the twin Bishops of Skalholt and Holar in Iceland and even by the first of American prelates, he who sat at Garth (or Garde) in Greenland[35] far away, knowing not that he lived in a different quarter of the world.
Trondhjem Cathedral is a great cruciform church about 325 feet long, whose nave and quire are aisled, and the western towers project north and south to widen the great façade: at the east end of the quire is an octagonal corona, and on the northern side, joined only by a passage, is the apsidal Church of St. Clement, recalling the position of the Lady Chapel at Ely. It is built of blue-grey saponite, a local stone easy to work, varied with marble from the island of Almenningen.
The oldest part is the transept which was raised by the great Archbishop Eystein. He was the foe of Sverre Sigurdsson, the knight-errant king, who in his youth had been ordained, still ignorant of his royal birth. In 1180 at a battle near Nidaros he contrived to establish his power and the archbishop fled to St. Edmundsbury in England, launching as a Scythian dart against the recreant priest a sentence of the excommunication of the Church. When no one seemed in the least impressed, and the king's power was waxing fast, the archbishop became more prudent. Making his peace with Sverre he returned to Nidaros and found less strenuous occupation in building his cathedral. He died in 1188, and the king gave his funeral address.
Each transept has the usual three storeys with corner turrets and a square chapel opening on the east. They are rich in shafts and arcading with plentiful zigzag moulding, and they are really striking examples of the style that the Normans brought to England. The upper parts display a certain restiveness to commence the development of later forms. The present tower arches are modern.
Not much later than the transepts is the little chapel of St. Clement, sometimes called the Lady Chapel and sometimes the Chapter House. Its nave is vaulted in two bays and flanked by western turrets; the roof of the apse is sustained by four clustered pillars bearing pointed arches.
The quire and nave and octagonal corona are fairly uniform in style but surprisingly otherwise in plan. They belong to that period of Gothic architecture when lancets were just giving place to traceried windows, and clustered shafts and foliage caps and deeply-moulded arches were more beautiful than after or before. The works were in progress through much of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and evidently dragged on long. A bad fire gave a serious set-back in 1328. It is doubtful whether the nave was ever done. It was begun as early as 1248 by Archbishop Sigurd, son of one of the brave birkebeiner or birchlegs, who had helped King Sverre to his throne.
The builders of each part seem to have been profoundly unconscious of what their colleagues elsewhere had been about. For they were working on the foundations of three little older churches. St. Clement's was built originally by St. Olaf himself, his son Magnus the Good raised a church over his later grave where now the corona stands, a stone church of St. Mary was erected by Harald Hardredy (p. [95]) on the site of the quire.[36] Most awkwardly St. Clement's joins the rest of the church; the beautiful aisle-encircled corona declines to meet the quire at any understandable angle, the walls and pillars of the quire itself trend apart on either side toward the east.[37] See plan opposite p. 246.
NORTH-EAST CORNER OF QUIRE, LOOKING INTO AISLE AND CORONA
[Face page 86