On painting a viking church

Ribe was a viking market place and trade town before it became the idyllic Danish coastal tourist town that it is now. It also is one of several possible sites where Ansgar built the first Christian church in Viking Scandinavia. Hence Ribe Vikingecenter, a wonderful reproduction museum of Viking age Ribe, built a replica.

Two years ago I first went on re-enactor camp in the market place of Ribe Vikingecenter. At this point in time the museum was constructing the church and we helped on the construction site - I will try to write a post about that at some point. Anyhow, it was finished end of 2017 and consecrated in spring 2018. So when we returned in summer 2018 the church was fully functional, however all the wonderful wooden carvings on the carrying pillars and framing the roof were still natural, only the edging of the A-shaped frames were coloured.

Ansgar's church just before it's consecration. This image is taken from the Ribe local newspaper "Ryk ind Ribe".

However Trine had started painting the pillars, so we joined in an helped there. 
A short note on Trine: she is one of the people who form the heart and soul of Ribe Vikingecenter and she is an artist. Among other things she designed the carvings themselves and she is now doing the vast majority of the painting and deciding on all the colours and mixing all the paints.

The colours are all earth-based pigments, except for black which is charcoal. They are made into tempera paints, however I will let Trine explain for herself in this video (she speaks Danish, but the English subtitles of the video are very good).
The pigments used on the outside of the church are:

• Yellow: Ochre
• Red:  Red Ochre (does not have it's own Wikipedia article)
• Green: Green Earth (substitute for the poisonous Verdigris)
• White: Titanium white (substitute for the poisonous Lead White)
• Black: Charcoal

The resulting paint is viscous but pleasant to paint and I was surprised how pigmented it was and how well it covered the wood underneath. The texture reminded me of acrylic paints.

Adapted from
Ribe Vikingecenter's official facebook page
(Adaptation: cover faces)

In 2018 I actually didn't actively paint, I took over making glass beads from Trine so she could paint, but this year I got to paint a little. However 2018 was exciting, because the Danish queen was due to visit two weeks after our stay ended and Trine wanted as much of the church painted as possible. Especially one member of our camp spent several days carefully framing the column elements in black - he even made it into the Vikingecenter's official picture series.

Now at this time Trine was urgently trying to make progress because in two weeks the queen of denmark was going to visit and she wanted to have all columns in standing height painted - at least as far as possible. So she was especially greatful for help and they actually made considerable progress. At least on one side most columns were painted with at least two or three columns for the visit of the queen.

This image from the Esbjerg newspaper is proof that the Danish queen really did come to visit.

Also from
Ribe Vikingecenter's official facebook page

This year, some of the painting was done on scaffolding, some of it on ladders, however there was still plenty of painting to be done - and as another camp member was able to take over making the glass beads for both Trine and I we could both paint - I got to do some painting too! I ended up painting green and black on three seperate columns, though admittedly I did not cover large survaces. As I only was able to paint for one day the progress I could realistically make was limited. and I don't have any images of me painting or the status afterwards... However the last image shows as close to the current status as I could find online. Do you see the column in the middle that has the red and yellow knots on black pattern, but the black stops halfway up the column? I filled in some of the black that is missing in this image. That's as close as this post will get to describing what exactly I did. But who cares (except for me, I will visit next year and in my thoughts point and think 'I did that bit!').