Trondheim - Day 3

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Geo: 63.4267, 10.3945

Today I made my way back to Nidaros cathedral, having learned that the Archbishops palace was only closed on Mondays. The intel turned out to be correct because amazingly, it was open!

The archbishops palace consists of three buildings. Originally it was built for the archbishop of Nidarros (surprise) but later became a military barracks and now it is a museum. In the 80's two of the buildings burned down. While excavating the grounds, medieval artifacts were found and as a result a lot more is now known about life in the palace. It was a little town within itself with all sorts of trade going on. There were blacksmiths and wood craftsman, all sorts of things. The archaeological dig found evidence that women and children lived in the palace as well....I'm sure they weren't the archbishops

The palace was a mint at in the 1200's. This worked very nicely for the archbishop as it gave the then Catholic church, a position of power in the political landscape. By the end of the 13th century the king took back the rights and the archbishop was forced out of production. They got the rights back in the 1500's by which time I'm guessing it was a Lutheran church. Once again, this gave the church a position of power and prestige. So much so, that the last three Archbishops had their own images stamped upon the coins, instead of that of the Danish king. Ego much?

The museum itself had lot of artifacts found during excavations. Mostly broken pieces but they also found these awesome wood carvings. Really ornate stuff. There was a large display on the statues of the cathedral. These stone works, made from soap stone, were exterior to the church. As a result of being exposed to the elements they were worn out, so they were taken down to preserve them. There was also a fair collection of broken sculptures which were damaged during the fire of 1537. There was a series of small models of the church/cathedral from its original structure, then showing step by step as it grew.

A second museum in the Archbishops palace holds the royal regalia. So of course I trotted off to see the jewellery. These ones were much simpler than the Danes jewels. Just three crowns, one for the king, the queen and the crown prince. And of course they had the scepters, orbs and swords that these royal types seem to like. Seriously, like the rocks in those crowns aren't worth enough?

Finally for my afternoon I found a quiet pub to settle back into. I was looking at a long trip to London the next day (well about 6 hours travel time) and I felt I needed to relax and power up for my first weekend in London town. So a bit of time in the pub, some light reading, some light blogging, some light drinking. Feeling very relaxed

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