756 
THE AM ERICA N-SCANDINA VI AN REVIEW 1 
The first bishop was a young Englishman by n nald. As 
soon as he took office he made up his mind thp f must be 
built in the city and work was soon begun. It proceeded but slowly, 
however, for the building required much money, and of money the new 
bishop had but little. Yet he was determined that the cathedral should 
be made beautiful, no matter how long it took, and meanwhile he bent 
all his energies to collecting funds. 
One day the bishop received a visit from the king of Norway, 
Sigurd Jerusalem-farer, so called because he had in his youth made a 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The king had divorced his queen, Malm- 
frid, and wanted to marry a noble lady by name Cecilia, and now he 
came with the request that the bishop should perform the ceremony. 
To this the bishop, as was natural, had very strong objections, but the 
king persisted in his purpose. Finally the bishop said: “If you will 
give a large gift to our church here and thereby do penance before God 
and man, I will marry you.” The king was very happy, and replied: 
“You shall have all the treasure you want.” It was so done, and the 
cathedral was richly dowered. 
It is not known with certainty when the building was completed, 
but it was probably about 1150, when the solemn dedication took place. 
The dome was named after the British saint Svetonius, whose name in 
Norway became corrupted to Svitun, and to this day it is called 
St. Svitun’s church. It is the oldest and, next to that of Trondhjem, 
the most magnificent cathedral edifice in Norway. 
In 1272 the building was swept by fire, and in restoring it, the 
old choir was torn down to give place to a new. By this time the 
cathedral had twelve canons, each of whom had his altar in the choir, 
and this required ampler dimensions. Moreover, a new style of archi¬ 
tecture, the Gothic, had become fashionable. The choir was therefore 
rebuilt with pointed arches, while the nave was allowed to retain the 
original romanesque style with round arches. Flowers, vines, and 
garlands fret the surfaces of the stone, while here and there the face 
of a king or a bishop looks gravely out over the wide spaces. There is 
a loftiness and purity in the style of this venerable dome which nat¬ 
urally lifts the mind and inspires the heart to prayer. 
When the Reformation came to Norway, many of the old churches 
fared ill. They were no longer kept up as before, and some fell to ruins 
completely. Stavanger, like the rest, suffered under the strain of the 
hard times. Nearly all the church lands were seized by the Crown, so 
that there was no income left for the maintenance of the cathedral. 
Still it was saved from destruction, while all the other churches which 
Stavanger possessed in the middle ages were wiped out. After awhile 
a brighter day dawned for the old pile, and now the care of this me¬ 
morial from the past is felt by all citizens as a duty which no one 
would wish to evade. 
