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During the eleventh century a stone church replaced Bluetooth's building of logs. Knut the Holy, King of Denmark (1080-86), gave what help he could. The fact that this structure was on the same site as the present cathedral may help to account for the extraordinary irregularities in setting out the extremely simple ground plan.
The church is almost wholly of brick, heavily buttressed and rather German in appearance; it must have been still more so originally when each bay of the aisles had a gable of its own. With its tall western spires and little central flèche, it reminds one of the Cathedral at Lübeck, but is a very much finer church. All the original parts were erected during the thirteenth century, the builders working east to west, delayed by fires in 1234 and 1284.[54]
A magnificent monument in the quire fitly commemorates the greatest of all the honoured dead that rest within this simple and most impressive church. On an altar-tomb of great beauty and well restored is the canopied effigy of a lovely woman, who died in 1412. No student of history can tread here unmoved. We are in the presence of the most far-seeing of all the sovereigns of the North: the noble Margaret of whom the great Chronicle of Lübeck says, "When men saw the wisdom and strength that were in this royal lady, wonder and fear filled their hearts." She was a daughter of Waldemar Atterdag (p. [161]), and had married the King of Norway. "Great marvel it is to think that a lady, who, when she began to govern for her son found a troubled kingdom, in which she owned not money or credit enough to secure a meal without the aid of friends, had made herself so feared and loved in the short term of three months, that nothing in all the land was any longer withheld from her."
By the Union of Calmar in 1397, she arranged the eternal federation of the four Scandinavian realms on principles acceptable to all. One King should reign, but each land should maintain its proper laws. The Northlands realised the blessings of her rule, and all that she did was so good that even her wretchedly unworthy successors took a century and a quarter to undo her work.
Womanish, perhaps unworthy, yet by no means unprovoked, her mocking insults to the captured Swedish King, Albert the Elder of Mecklenburg. This carpet-bagger's German hirelings had been scattered by her troops, and she dressed him in the garments of a fool with a tail of nineteen yards in length depending from his cap. Natural but unnecessary return for his offensive gifts of an apron and a long gown and a whetstone to sharpen her needles!
To her memory (in part) are the beautiful miserere stalls on whose canopies are Scripture scenes, set up in 1420 by Bishop Jens Andersen. By her was fitted the Bethlehem Chapel under the south-west tower.
Strong, indeed, in life, but yet more strong in death, the appeal of the great queen! Even now the world is a loser because the Scandinavian realms are torn. Very truly spake a Swedish writer whom Otté quotes, but does not name: "Death made an end of Queen Margaret's life, but it could not make an end of her fame, which will endure through all ages. Under her hands the three kingdoms enjoyed a degree of strength and order to which they had long been strangers before her time, and which neither of the three regained till long after her."