Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen
(CULTSYMBOLS, University of Copenhagen)
Saints and Identities in Scandinavia: Patterns and Paradoxes
This paper explores questions of identity, regionalism and belonging through the Scandinavian national saints. Through this I will try to extrapolate conclusions concerning the status and importance between the local and the international in the saints’ cult of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. By examining the wall-paintings and altarpieces and posing questions such as how the saints are grouped in the churches, in what order they are represented and who donated them to the churches and furthermore comparing the answers with known liturgical feast insights can be gained into the devotional and social role of saints in medieval Scandinavia.
Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen is an editor of the source publication The Churches of Denmark at the Danish National Museum and was a postdoctoral researcher in the ESF CULTSYMBOLS project at the University of Copenhagen. He has specialized in medieval and early modern art and its role in the devotional life of the period. He has written on saints, pilgrimage and shrines. His doctoral thesis Art and Ritual: Changing the interiors of Danish village churches c. 1450-1600 will appear in Brepols in the spring 2014.
