Luleå church

The old Luleå, called Gammelstad, is in the Unesco world heritage for its church town. Such church towns were typical of Scandinavia where people were staying in their farms at a distance from the town, but were gathering on Sunday in the town church for the service and to meet each others. So, they developed small cottages around the church where all farmers from the neighbourhood could come and stay for the weekend close to the church, as travelling from their farms would take too long for a single day trip.

The Luleå church is the largest medieval church in the Norrland province. The building of the stone church started in the fifteen century. In 1621, Luleå became officially a city allowed to collect taxes for the region. This generated prosperity to the city but in 1649, the harbour became too shallow and was moved closer to the coast, to Luleå "new town". Today, the old Luleå is 16 kilometres away from the marina where we are.

The pulpit was sculpted in the baroque style in 1712 by Nils Jacobsson Fluur and painted in 1745.

The paintings on the vaults were done by Albertus Pictor in the XV century. They were covered with lime in 1737 and cleaned in 1936 and 1971. THis explains why the quality of the painting is not perfect on all the paintings inthe church.

The altar of the church is one of the finest altar piece in Sweden. It includes wooden figures recounting the passion of Christ. It was built in Antwerp around 1520. The scene below on the right is extracted from the old testament in the book of numbers. The scouts were sent by Moses to find-out a place where the Israelites could settle. These scouts found out the grape valley and brought back grapes to Moses. This scene appears in many churches painted by Albertus Pictor, e.g. in the Häkerberga church. The paintings have suffered from being covered and restored.