Heldum Church

Heldum Church is a very fine example of the 51 Romanesque ashlar churches in the geopark. The church is quite small, and unlike many of the other churches, it has not changed much since it was built in the late 12th century.

A small, poor parish

The church was probably built by a nobleman in Tørring Parish, and the separated parish consisted of only 8 farms, so it was a small, poor parish. This may be the explanation for the fact that the church was not expanded with a tower and porch in the late Middle Ages. In addition, it has been quite dilapidated for periods. An arson attack in 1908 caused extensive damage to the choir. During the subsequent renovation, a porch was added. The old bell, which hangs in the bell stack on the west gable, is from the church's "childhood". It is estimated to date from 1300, or sometime in the latter half of the 13th century.

An exemplary representative

Heldum Church stands as an exemplary representative of the majority of the 51 Romanesque ashlar churches found in the geopark area, as most of them looked when they were built in the period 1100 – 1250, the Romanesque style period. These are characterized by a simple basic form consisting of a rectangular nave and a square choir, slightly narrower than the nave and in a few cases with an arched apse, and without a tower. Only a very few churches have had a tower from the beginning. These have been added in the late Middle Ages, predominantly in the late Gothic period together with a porch and possible side chapels and expansion of the windows, although in most cases the Romanesque round-arched style has been preserved.

The interior

The layout of the church room in the original Romanesque churches was changed after the Reformation in 1536. There were two doors in the western part of the nave, a women's door on the north side and a men's door on the south side. After the Reformation, the north door was bricked up in most churches. Originally, there were no rows of benches, but a bricked-up stone bench along the walls of the nave. There could be a raised platform (pulpit) along the west gable for the well-to-do. The baptismal font was placed on a circular, two-stepped platform in the middle of the nave, slightly offset to the east opposite the two doors. In the triumphal wall, the round-arched opening, the triumphal arch, is built of ashlar. At the triumphal wall there were two side altars, a Mary altar to the north and a Michael altar to the south, often with an alterniche, as can be seen in Heldum Church. In the middle of the triumphal wall there could be a lay altar and on a crossbeam hung a cross of Christ. In the choir was a bricked-up stone altar with a monolith as an altar table, in which there was a recess, a “saint’s grave”, for martyr relics, which could be a bone fragment, a piece of cloth and the like. After the Reformation, the stone altar was replaced in most places with more pompous altars. In the masonry of several churches there is an ashlar with the saint’s shrine. The altar table has been dismantled and reused in later turnovers of the masonry.

The church was richly decorated with frescoes, and the baptismal font was painted in bright colors. After the Reformation, most of the frescoes were whitewashed over and the baptismal font's paintings had to be removed. In a report from Heldum Church in 1826, the last remains of paint were required to be removed from the baptismal font. At the Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum there is a reconstruction of a Romanesque village church, where the medieval interior of the church can be seen. The strong colors of the frescoes here have been reconstructed by the National Museum based on chemical analyses of the original frescoes.