Inside the Kirke

After a lovely breakfast provided by our hosts, Jø rn and Irene, we were met by Pastor Jens Kristian Holmgaard from the local parish. Pastor Jens looks after four churches in this rural area of Denmark, including the two I was interested in seeing. After some quick introductions he suggested seeing Hanning Kirke (church) first. Driving through the area I thought it reminded me of the area around Brooks and Tilley, except here there were more trees. They were irrigating crops in places, and the ground was quite flat, the grain fields were beginning to ripen and I was beginning to feel at home (including the hay fever which has kicked in). Pastor Jens told us that all the trees in this area were hand planted a little over a 100 years ago, to prevent soil erosion from the strong winds… so it is like the prairies in many ways!

At the church the first thing we noticed were the immaculate graveyard beside the church. We met the caretaker of the grounds, and he seemed like he really cared about his job… within minutes he had located some gravestones of my ancestors, including one I will have to research more when I get back. But he somehow knew that the Henriksens were bricklayers (or murers in Danish). This man has a full time job looking after the graveyard (which is pretty much the whole of the church grounds), and we’ve never seen anything like it before - very beautiful and respectful - we could take a lesson in Canada from these Danes.

Inside the church I found the baptismal font that my Grandfather, Harry Henriksen (as it was spelled in those days), was baptised in. It was larger than I anticipated, large enough to immerse an infant, which was the practice for many years… but then too many infants got sick and died after being immersed in water in the cold months, so the practice of sprinkling was developed (according to Pastor Jens). The font is made of stone, and is very old, dating back many centuries - perhaps even older than the church building (which was built in the 11th century).

A few other interesting features about this church: There is an entrance called the weapons room and it was in there that men in the earlier centuries would leave their weapons before entering the sanctuary. There is an arch which divides the altar area from the nave, this is called the Triumphal Arch and is a symbol of the victory of Christ over sin and death. The arch can not be perfectly symmetrical however, since only God is perfect - so little imperfections, in the form of differences between the two sides of the arch, are intentionally put in by the stone workers. The altar in these old churches always is in the east, thus the congregation always faces east in worship - the place of the son rise, and returning Christ. Pulpits were added after the reformation (there really were no sermons prior to then), so in the case of this church in Hanning, a hole was cut into the one wall by the Triumphal Arch so that there could be room to put in steps up to the pulpit. Many of the pulpits that were created shortly after the reformation have paintings of all four of the gospel writers on them (we saw two examples of this on out tour with Pastor Jens).

We took lots of pictures, and even waited until 11 AM to record the church bell (Pastor Jens was amazed to learn that many churches in western Canada do not even have bells, let alone ring them regularly - he asked “How do people know it’s time to go to church?” We shrugged and said “They look at their watches”. Certainly not as interesting as hearing the bell ringing in the distance.) For us the bell meant it was time to move on to the next church.