Hedensted Church

Hedensted Church dates from the twelfth century. Before the oldest stone churches were built, the Vikings built their churches with wood, but we rarely know much about them, as stone churches were often later built over the same site. However, in Hedensted you can get a sense of the original wooden church. When floor heating was being installed in 2007, archaeologists were given the opportunity to excavate the church floor, where they found the remains of a wooden building. It was a three-aisled long hall from 1050 measuring 15 x 7m – an unusual floor plan, so perhaps the early wooden churches may have had a completely different design than we have hitherto supposed? There were also traces of an altar and baptismal wells just outside the two entrances of the church, where women and men could be baptised separately before entering the church. This practice ceased when the stone church was built, and the wells were filled in with the foundations of the new church. The ground plan of the wooden church is marked out on the new floor of the church.