Mariakirken i Oslo - bevaringstilstand
Petter Snekkestad2012, Riksantikvarens vitenarkiv
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Abstract
The ruin of St Mary’s church is located in the area of Sørenga in the Gamlebyen district of Oslo. It is integrated in a park that counts five exposed ruins from the Medieval Period. An artificial pool recreates the shore-line of Oslo c. 1300 defining a tongue of land called Øren, on which St Mary’s was erected, a short distance from the King’s Manor. The Medieval town was moved to the area around Akershus fortress following a devastating fire in 1624. St Mary’s was ruined already in the middle of the sixteenth century, and then unearthed in what had become cropland in 1868. The current appearance of the ruin is the result of conservation work that started in 1961. It is preserved in c. 0,5 to 2,0 m height, where additional courses are added to create a somewhat horizontal wall, or put up over a membrane in order to protect the underlying material. In general, the west front and twin towers have mostly original material under a membrane, while the brickwork in the Gothic chancel have very little. With some irregularities, the plinths are either visible or barely covered by grass or gravel. The general outline of the fourteenth century version of the church is protruding and readable. The plan of the Romanesque church, however, apart from the nave, is almost entirely reconstructed in ankle-height with new material. This includes the tower and the elongation of the chancel. The initial wooden church is marked with cut off poles where the posts stood. The most striking feature of the ruin is the three-part shift in building material and masonry style. The western part displays thick walls and massive plinths with rough and large stone masonry of varying kind in the Gothic style. The middle part consists of slightly slimmer, but heavy walls dominated by horizontal shifts of limestone typical of the Romanesque style. This is the nave that survived the Gothic rebuilding. Finally, the eastern part stands out with its elegant and straight-lined brickwork on top of a base of large and finely hewed ashlars. This is a study of the ruin along with the diaries and photographic material of excavators Gerhard Fischer and Håkon Christie in order to distinguish between original and modern, added-on material in the ruin. Also, I argue that both Gothic towers had staircases and that a huge fitting-stone on the site could have belonged to a western portal in the Romanesque church.
