Between New Ideals and Conservatism: The Early Lutheran Church Interior in Sixteenth-Century Denmark

Abstract

This essay examines how the Lutheran Reformation changed church spaces in the Danish kingdom after 1536—the official year of Reformation in Denmark. Rather than addressing the long-term consequences of the Reformation, the essay demonstrates how the ideas of the first and second generation of reformers came to be expressed in churches; that is, how the reception of Lutheran thinking was materialized in church interiors prior to what is commonly known as the period of Lutheran orthodoxy. This early period of change, spanning the second half of the sixteenth century, is particularly fickle and difficult to grasp, not only because many of the first Lutheran Church fittings were replaced in later centuries, but also because the speed at which the new religious ideals found their way into churches varied greatly from region to region. Nevertheless, certain trends emerged that are still evident today. While these short-lived, idealistic attempts at a new evangelical church interior failed as a whole, they nevertheless left a pronounced impact on the churches in general.