MASTERPIECES IN WOOD
- Medieval Wood-Carvers in Norrland

THE EXHIBITION

Göran Carlsson

Museum Director

The Madonna with the beautiful smile, illustrated on the front cover, comes from the medieval church at Ytterlännäs - a village which is situated some 300 miles north of Stockholm - in Norrland. Today, Norrland does not form an administrative unit in itself - either in the secular or the ecclesiastical sense. It is divided into five counties, each with its own administration, and includes three different dioceses.

However, Norrland did constitute a single county for a period of time in the 18th century, and in the Middle Ages all this part of the country belonged to the same diocese.

A remarkable collection of art from around 1500 can be found in the churches of Norrland, and hundreds of wooden sculptures still remain intact with their original paint and gilding. They were created in local wood-carving workshops and have an artistic character of their own which clearly differentiates them from contemporary work from other parts of the country. From time to time during the 20th century, museums in Norrland have put on exhibitions of church art, but until recently no one had ever collected together a large number of these medieval sculptures for the purpose of displaying them to the public.

This was one of the reasons why Bildmuseet (the Museum of Pictures), which is Umeå University's own museum, set up an exhibition entitled Bildhuggarnas Mästerverk ('Masterpieces in Wood - The Art of the Medieval Wood-Carvers in Norrland'). The University is the only one in Norrland (*) and therefore has a special responsibility for the promotion of regional culture. It also celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1990 with an exhibition of Norrland's landscape paintings.

Bildhuggarnas Mästerverk opened on 3th June and featured 33 sculptures - madonnas, crucifixes, saints and triptychs.

Most of these were borrowed from churches, a few from museums. The exhibition was designed to focus attention on the individual works of art and on their richness of form and colour. The museum's large exhibition hall was very dimly lit, and illumination were directed solely at the exhibits. The height and space of the hall was accentuated by means of special arrangements of the podium. This gave the room a sacred atmosphere which was reinforced by the discrete sound effects of Gregorian choral singing.

THE BOOK

A book has been published, in addition to the fairly copious textual information offered by the actual exhibition. It also contains a guide to the churches of Norrland for those wishing to see more of medieval Sweden.

The guide has not been included in this newly-printed English version; on the other hand, there are two comprehensive articles and illustrations of a large selection of the figures, together with some from the exhibition itself. The authors, Professor Anders Åman from Umeå University, and Lennart Karlsson, Reader and specialist on the Middle Ages at the National History Museum in Stockholm, both took part in the planning of the exhibition.

 

Title page - Northern Medieval Art Regained - The Distinctiveness of Norrland

Ytterlännäs Gamla Kyrka - Torsåkers Kyrka

(*) There are also 'Högskolor' in Luleå and central Sweden (Härnösand-Sundsvall-Östersund-Örnsköldsvik) which now (1999) are considered to have university status.