Syddør, norddør og det kønsopdelte kirkerum

Resumé

South door, north door, and the gender separated church interior
By Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen

Almost every Romanesque church built in medieval Denmark was constructed with two doorways, one on the north side of the nave and one on the southern side. These doors have traditionally been interpreted as being used by men and women respectively. The men would have used the southern door while the north door was reserved to the women. This explanation has more or less been accepted in most of the Danish literature on the medieval churches, but a closer scrutiny of the evidence for this interpretation reveals it as highly unlikely. Instead of the old gender related explanation this article aims at interpreting the doorways of the Romanesque churches in the light of the liturgical movements of the 10th and 11th centuries. It is proposed here that only one of the church doors was used as a regular entryway while the other one was used in connection with the rituals of public penance, excommunication, the churching of women and burial rites. On the other hand the article argues that gender separation was widely used inside of the churches through the early and high middle ages. This practice waned during the 15th century but was taken up again by the Protestant reformers and reintroduced in the parish churches. The main point is that gender separation and the two doorways of the church had nothing to do with each other. The oldest written sources explaining the doorways as male and female entryways are from the later part of the 19th century and are very much rooted in a romantic or nostalgic understanding of the medieval church.