11 kmThorsminde
The west coast’s harbor and shipwreck setting make a good excursion from the church.
Fjaltring Church lies close to the North Sea, and you can already feel it in the churchyard. Here many graves are surrounded by white picket fences, highest on the west side, so they shelter against the wind that shapes the area. It is a practical solution, but also the most striking local feature of the place.
The church itself is a West Jutland ashlar church with chancel and nave from Romanesque times. From the outside, you can notice the mix of whitewashed surfaces and visible ashlar masonry, lead-covered roofs and a tower that has required repeated repairs because of its exposed location by the sea. The bricked-up medieval doors and partly preserved window niches are small traces of the older building, if you look for them.
The church interior is simple, with whitewashed walls, a red-painted wooden ceiling and polished plank floors. The Romanesque granite baptismal font is the church’s oldest piece of furnishings, while the altarpiece is a cabinet altarpiece with figures including Mary with the Christ Child and Saint Christopher. Hanging above the nave is also the ship model Printz Christian, a locally built model of a three-masted full-rigged ship. In the southeast corner of the churchyard, two small stone sculptures mark the graves of the anonymous dead.
The altarpiece in Fjaltring Church is a late medieval, three-winged cabinet altarpiece from around the year 1500. The central section brings together three motifs: Saint Anne the Third, the Throne of Grace, and Saint Christopher with the Christ Child on his shoulder.
The side wings contain the 12 apostles in two rows. The altarpiece was modernized in 1642 with side wings, gables, and predella, so today it combines medieval figures with later Renaissance-style additions.
