Hørning Church

Hørning Church, has a very special Viking past. The original part of the present church is in the Romanesque style, and thereby belongs among the earliest stone churches, dating from the beginning of the Middle Ages. In 1887 the church underwent a major restoration, and beneath the floor were found the remains of the original wooden church – including a well-preserved piece of oak, ornamented in the Urnes style, and which today is known as the Hørning plank. The piece of wood was part of the hammer brace of the original stave church, built around 1060, and had been painted in green and red colours. In the park beside Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, you can see a reconstruction of the original wooden church in Hørning. In 1960 the archaeologists returned and discovered that the wooden church had itself been built on top of a burial mound 20m in diameter, in which a wealthy woman had been buried in a chamber grave around the year 950. The chamber was constructed in exactly the same way as in the Mammen grave in Bjerringhøj, 40km west of here. The woman was placed lying on her back, wearing a dress or tunic with silver-coloured trimmings. She had a silver-threaded band of cloth approximately 5cm wide and 2.5m long from her forehead to her knees on each side of the body.  She had been buried in a carriage and had fine grave goods with her: five glass beads lay on her chest, and there was a small knife with a silver-inlaid shaft, two small whetstones, a glass cup, a small casket, a wooden box, a pair of tubs, a wooden cask, and a small square table on which was placed a washbasin in bronze.  Unfortunately, the objects were so decayed they could not be exhibited. The burial mound had been levelled when the first church was built, leaving the body of the woman beneath the floor of the church.