Bilden, texten och kyrkorummet. En studie av scener kring Jesu födelse och Kristoffermotivet i Sydskandinaviens medeltida kalkmåleri

Sammanfattning: The subject of the thesis is the narratives in medieval mural paintings in southern Scandinavia c 1100-1530. Its aim is to examine their relationship to texts, to the viewer and to the church space, where the viewer looks at the murals. Two different subjects have been chosen for study: S Christopher and the Nativity of Christ. From the corpus of preserved mural paintings with these subjects in southern Scandinavia a selection of monuments has been put to closer study. The dissertation consists, after a review of previous research (1), of four main chapters, focusing on: 2. The S Christopher image, its temporal aspects and its relationship to the verbal narrative and to the church space. 3. The Nativity scene and its relationship to the narrative and its temporal aspects. 4. The pictorial sequence of the Nativity story and the interrelationship of its different scenes, the sequence and the church space. The finishing chapter (5) focuses on the relationship between the pictures, the church space, its function and the worshippers. The S Christopher images have played a very active part in the development of the saint's legend. The pictures develop from an imago-like representation to a historia in the form of a scene with implied action. In a similar way the Nativity scene develops from a representation without much implied action, and later becomes more closely related to time and change - something that partly changes its meaning. Most of the Nativity scenes are part of pictorial sequences, with an entirely chronological arrangement or with a more or less typological one. The meaning and content of the sequences are influenced by their combination of scenes in a spatial structure, and also by their placing in the church interior. The position of the mural paintings on the walls and vaults and in the different parts of the church interior gives them varying accessibility for the worshippers and the clergy, and different relationship to the centres of the room, such as the altar(s), the font, the entrance, the screen etc. The pictorial surfaces are also to different degrees subordinate to the existing surfaces and boundaries, which become an important factor in the arrangement of the mural paintings.