Samuel Laing[81] became quite enthusiastic over the Visby churches. "These are the most interesting Gothic edifices in Europe. Wisby is the Rome of the modern architects who will deal in the Gothic." Possibly this is exaggerated (Laing's knowledge of architecture was small), but there is in it an element of truth. The way in which the church-builders of Gothland departed from stereotyped principles and planned as they were moved is refreshingly original. No series of churches in the world is more deserving of the closest study. This tendency to unusual ground plans and the Norwegian stavekirkes are the chief contributions to Gothic architecture that the northern lands made as the middle ages wore. It gives a most vivid idea of the unity of mediæval Christendom and of the frequency of communication that existed to realise the way in which architecture went through the same general course of evolution in all the lands from Portugal to Norway from the coronation of Charles the Great to the abdication of Charles V.
The oldest and most massive of the Visby churches is dedicated to St. Lars, or Lawrence; it was evidently raised in the early years of the twelfth century, nine hundred years after its patron had suffered on the grid. Though with windows unglazed and bare of any fittings the structure is very tolerably perfect and, as one first enters, the effect is exceedingly impressive and also extremely oriental. Greek merchants raised it; they had seen Byzantine churches in the East and desired in the cold North to reproduce their effect.[82]
S. LARS
[Face page 166
Only a narrow court separates this church from another, which a generation later men raised to the honour of St. Drotten or the Triune God. Some idle person once invented an absurd tale (reminding one of that concerning the twin steeples at Ormskirk) that these sister churches were raised by two rich sisters who were such bad friends that they would not even kneel under the same roof to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The actual plan is very similar to that of St. Lars, but it does not seem to have been so successful.[83]
The Church of St. Olaf (Swedish Olof) appears to have been of very similar character; there the Norway merchants used to pray.[84] The scantiest ruins survive in the Botanical Gardens. Thither the citizens resort in summer to eat their meals and listen to a band.
The same plan is reproduced in St. Clemens,[85] whose patron saint has an anchor for his badge and likes his churches to stand by the sea. The south porch evidently formed a vapenhus, or house in which weapons might be left: this was a common feature of the churches of the North, for thus it is written in the ancient Icelandic Law Ecclesiastic. "Men shall not bear weapons in church or oratory that is licensed for service to be held in, and they shall not set them against the church gable or the church walls. And these are reckoned weapons under this head—axe and sword and spear and cutlass and halberd."
Excavations within the walls of this now unroofed shrine, carried on by the learned Dr. Ekhoff, have exposed foundations of three more ancient churches. The earliest of them dates back perhaps to about the year 900 or within a century of the traditional era of the foundation of the town. A story had grown up that to St. Olaf was due the first preaching of Christianity among the merchants of Gothland, but this is evidently a libel on the progressive thought of the ancient fathers of the town. The Saga of Olaf has several visits to Gothland to record, but it says nothing of his preaching the faith there, and has little of him to record that would be likely to make the Gothlanders trow in the same God as he. After the adventure of Stocksound (p. [211]) we learn that "King Olaf sailed in autumn for Gothland, and arrayed him for harrying there. But there the Gothlanders had a gathering, and sent men to the king, and bade him tribute for the land. To this the king agreed, and took tribute of the land, and sat there the winter through." It was in reference to this event that the verse at the head of the chapter was composed. It was in Gothland too that Olaf let hew one Jokul, son of Bard, who had fought against him and was allotted to the steering of the Bison, which King Olaf himself had owned.