Nobelmen and women, in fancy clothing and pearls – but with dragon wings and tails. A laughing man with a full head of curly hair. Lions biting the ears off a man whose mouth is full of writhing serpents. These may sound like a weird combination of a gothic novel and a nightmare, but they're something completely different – a description of some of the eerie and surprising sculptures in Nidaros Cathedral, the northernmost gothic cathedral in the world that's located in NTNU's hometown of Trondheim.
But what were the messages that stonemasons and religious leaders were trying to send visitors to the cathedral – and how do we interpret these messages 800 years later?
My guests on today's show are Øystein Ekroll, chief archaeologist and researcher at the Nidaros Cathedral Restoration Workshop and Margrete Syrstad Andås, an art historian and associate professor at NTNU's Department of Art and Media Studies.
You can read more about the history of the cathedral in this article from Norwegian SciTech News: Thousand-year-old cathedral surrenders its secrets, stone by stone
Andås, Margrete Syrstad, Øystein Ekroll Andreas Haug and Nils Holger Petersen, eds,
(Traditions and Transformations 3), Turnhout, Brepols, 2007
Like what you're hearing? Leave a review, tell your friends, subscribe! And you can contact me, Nancy Bazilchuk, with feedback at nancy.bazilchuk@ntnu.no