Grættrup
If you drive north from Sundsøre or Nørre Thise in eastern Salling and look east, you have a magnificent view of Skive Fjord and Himmerland on the other side of the fjord. At some point, you reach a junction where Vejsmarkvej merges into Fjordvej. Here lies a collection of houses that can be considered the center of the small village of Grættrup. In the very old days before the replacement, Grættrup was an independent parish with many farms, most of which were probably copyhold farms under manor houses and estates such as Jungetgård in Nordøstsalling east of the village of Junget, but we’ll come back to that story later. Now back to the drive and the junction in what is now Grættrup.
Church plot
At this junction, a less busy gravel road heads east towards the fjord and after passing a number of properties on the right, you come to the last property in the row, which has the address Fjordvej no. 66. Just southeast of this property is a wooden cross, and in addition to the wooden cross, the spot is marked with gravel, lawn and a bench. This small spot marks the location of Grættrup Church and its cemetery some 500 years ago.
Medieval village churches
The original church here was probably built in the same medieval style as most of Salling’s and the country’s other churches from the middle of the 12th century, i.e. built of granite ashlar and monk stone with a choir and nave. Later, these medieval churches often had a porch and tower added and were whitewashed, so that today the churches stand as the white medieval churches we know so well. Unfortunately, we have no archaeological evidence or written sources that directly describe what Grættrup Church looked like before it was demolished. There is no doubt that there would have been relevant material for reuse in other churches, but what do we really know about Grættrup Church and why did it disappear?
The church in Grættrup
As previously mentioned, Grættrup Church, like thousands of other Danish churches, was built in the 1100s. By that time, Grættrup had grown into such a large parish that there was enough land to build a stone church with a priest’s office. There had probably been a small wooden church before the new stone church. An undertaking as large as building a new church involved the king, bishop and a local lord who could finance the construction for the parishioners, who were mostly farmers with families who were often tenants of the local lord. The actual running of the church was paid for through the tithe tax (1/10 of the peasants’ crops), which went to the lord, the church and the king. We don’t know which lord was behind the construction of the church in Grættrup Parish, but the lord of Jungetgaard, Herman Skeel, was involved in the subsequent dismantling of the church around 4oo years later. Throughout the Middle Ages, it can be assumed that Grættrup Parish had led a life like many other parishes with hard daily toil to provide food for people and animals from the land and to pay land dues, tithes and other taxes, if they did not also have to pay the lord of the manor. On Sundays, you could finally get a much-needed day of rest, where the parishioners dutifully attended church to listen to their Catholic priest and perhaps receive absolution in exchange for penance. However, as the time of the Reformation in 1536 approached, it seems that the finances of the parish were in dire straits for both peasants and priest, as shown in the royal letter below, which became the death sentence for Grættrup Church.
Royal letter
In a letter from King Chr. 3 dated July 22, 1552, it was simply stated that Grættrup Parish was to form one parish with Junget Parish and that Grættrup Church was to be demolished. Materials such as stone, timber, bells etc. were to be reused in Junget Church for extensions and improvements. Grættrup’s parishioners would then seek church and priest in Junget, so naturally they would also have to pay tithes to the church in Junget. The king justified the closure and demolition of the church on the grounds that the two neighboring parishes were so poor that together they could not support two priests, and since Junget was apparently the “least” poor parish, Grættrup Church had to go. The king had the information about the parish’s poverty from the bishop in Viborg, Herman Skeel of Jungetgaard, and two lords who had estates in Grættrup Parish, namely Erik Krabbe of Bustrup and Knud Gyldenstjerne of the Tim manor near Ringkøbing, who had also approved the closure of the parish. As such, they were quite important men who had been involved in the decision. Whether the priest and the poor peasants in the parish had been consulted is unknown.
Demolition
We must assume that the demolition of Grættrup Church took place immediately after the king’s letter of closure, and that the squares, timber, bells, furniture etc. were taken to Junget Church, but there is nothing to suggest that the items went to the right place, as Junget Church does not appear to have used these recycled materials. On the other hand, added granite blocks can be found in several of the region’s manor houses, including Krabbesholm, but here it seems that Krabbesholm had also used granite blocks from the disused Sct. Petri Church in Skive (Vestergade 1). Granite blocks seem to have been an attractive building material after the Reformation, when many new manor houses were built or expanded, but granite blocks also found a place on ordinary farms. Where the building materials from Grættrup Church ultimately disappeared to is still unknown, but what about the inventory from the disused church?
Remains from Grættrup Church
According to a statement from 1875 from a certain teacher Strandgaard from Selde, the top of the church’s granite baptismal font, the altar candlesticks and a brass baptismal font were at one point seen at Jungetgaard. Later, the upper part of the font, in which the brass baptismal font would probably have been immersed, would have ended up on a farm in Mogenstrup, where it was used as a “pig trough”. However, the noble pig trough was later purchased by teacher Krogh in Tøndering for DKK 75. He was an avid collector of historical relics and advocated for the preservation of our ancient mounds, and it was thanks to him that the upper part of Grættrup Church’s baptismal font was donated to the National Museum. Jeppe Aakjær wrote his article in 1926, and whether the medieval baptismal font from Grættrup is still at the National Museum is unknown, but it might be worth asking. The other objects mentioned, the altar candlesticks and the brass baptismal font, are believed to have been sold at an auction around 1876, when Jungetgaard changed owners, and scattered to the four winds. However, it’s not just the church that deserves a mention, as Grættrup Parish originally had a vicarage, and after the church was closed down, this vicarage became quite a problem.
Thise Church as an “annex church”
From time immemorial, Grættrup Parish shared a priest with Thise Parish, where Thise Church was a so-called annex church to Grættrup Parish, but the priest lived in Grættrup Præstegaard. In both parishes, it was said up to the Reformation that the parish farmers were “destitute” and that the vicarage, which with animals and crops was to help maintain the priest’s livelihood, was so poor that it was difficult for a priest to survive, and therefore the priests in Grættrup Præstegaard had already begun to flee the vicarage and seek more lucrative positions elsewhere before the famous closure of the church in Grættrup. One of the last priests in Grættrup Præstegaard before the closure of the church was Chr. Sonne, and he stated that both Grættrup Parish and the annexed Thise Parish were “poor” parishes, and for the vicarage it applied that the interest was “poor”, there was “no income”, and in addition, the vicarage (and associated land) was located on a “beach bank”.
Thise priest in Grættrup Presbytery
The problem with the vicarage in Grættrup after the closure of the church was that the farm was still the vicarage for the priest in Thise, and that the priest now had to go through a foreign parish to get to his church in Thise. Jeppe Aakjær was surprised that the former priest, who could now see out the window that his church was being demolished, did not put on his good clothes and move to Thise. There may have been a vicarage in Thise, but it was reportedly even worse than the vicarage in Grættrup, so it was better to stay in Grættrup after all. Another thing was that things didn’t move so quickly back then. Perhaps it was the general sluggishness of the population to change things now that the priest in Thise had always lived in Grættrup, and if you had to pay for a vicarage in Thise to make it usable, it would be too expensive. It could also be the bureaucracy of the time that was the reason why Thise’s priest stayed in Grættrup. In any case, it was several centuries before Thise had a priest in its own vicarage.
Difficult times in the vicarage
It was still difficult for the Thise priest in Grættrup Præstegaard to make ends meet, and now he didn’t even have a church, which according to sources was completely demolished in 1584, to look at. In 1596, however, the king had taken pity on the then Thise priest in Grættrup, who must have complained about the miserable financial conditions, so the king awarded him the “king’s tithe”, which was the part the king should have had in church tax. It was hoped that the priest could better sustain life at the vicarage in Grættrup. After the Swedish wars around 1659-60, the Swedes had left the whole of Salling, like most of the country, in an impoverished and impoverished state, including Thise and Grættrup parishes, so conditions had not improved for the priests in Grættrup Præstegaard. The priest in Thise stayed in Grættrup Præstegaard until sometime in the 1700s. Let’s now return to the starting point, namely the church plot at Fjordvej 66.
The church site after demolition
As mentioned, Grættrup Church had more or less disappeared from the face of the earth by 1584, but what happened to the church plot and the associated cemetery? In 1768, the Danish Atlas wrote that there were still “ruins” of the old church, but the farmers had refrained from digging on the site out of “reverence” for the place. After the replacement, which really took off in the latter part of the 18th century after the land reforms, farming began on the site, as Jungetgaard, who apparently must have owned the church site, transferred the land to the Frøsang farm, which was located just south of the church site, but with a “deep” valley in between. When Jeppe Aakjær visited the church site in 1926, the site had been taken over for cultivation and formed a corner of a field for the Frøsang farm, and here Aakjær spoke to a former owner of the farm. He said that he and his wife had farmed on the site for over 44 years, and previous owners had also used the land. One of the predecessors had dug up monk stones from the church plot, while another had set up a gravel pit nearby to put gravel in the nearby roads. However, he had come across many human bones and bones, so he had stopped the gravel digging as it didn’t look good with skeletal remains in the roads. Otherwise, nothing of interest had been found at the site. In 1964, the former church site was protected and is now maintained by Junget Church. That was the church site, but what about Grættrup Præstegaard?
The fate of the vicarage
During his visit to the church plot in 1926, Aakjær had been told that the old poor vicarage had been located “a bushel shot” northeast of the church hill, but here in 1926, Aakjær could only see a well-kept farm that probably had a good yield. Today, if you look “a bushel shot” to the northeast, there is still a farm where the original vicarage would have been located, but this farm is not believed to be the site of the old vicarage in Grættrup, but that it was right next to the original church and thus close to the current church plot. The location of Grættrup old vicarage will continue to be investigated.
Sources:
Jeppe Aakjær: På Grættrup gamle Kirkebakke. Skivebogen 1926.
+