Note 109 — Chapter VIII

There is a nave of seven bays and a quire of four, each with aisles and outer chapels, the western towers being the full width of both; each transept is of two bays and aisleless, the apse is three-sided with ambulatory and five radiating chapels, themselves apsidal. The corresponding chapels of Notre Dame, no less than thirteen in number, are not apsidal except the central one (though they usually are in other great French Gothic churches), but they were not built at the time Upsala was erected. In the case of Notre Dame the nave has two more bays and the quire one more, while the chapels, which were additions, are beyond the outer aisles. The length of Notre Dame is 430 feet, that of Upsala 360 feet, while across the transepts the French cathedral measures 165 feet, the Swedish 135 feet. The building of Upsala Cathedral was not finished till the fifteenth century, and the traceried windows in aisles and clearstorey are rather poor. The arches of the nave chapels are without caps, those of the quire in the same position are rather elaborate, and there is some good carved work over doors and round the ambulatory, though hardly in the same class with that at Notre Dame. The church was largely rebuilt in 1885-93, when the tall metal spires replaced rather ugly eighteenth century turrets and the central flèche was built. Both inside and outside look very new. The former is largely covered with modern paintings, and nearly all the fittings are recent except the beautiful Renaissance canopied pulpit by Tessin (p. 203).

(I am unable to agree with Fergusson in thinking this "an extremely uninteresting church." T. Francis Bumpus, in his beautiful work, The Cathedrals and Churches of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, 1908, comes to the conclusion that French influence in the design was small, and that it is to be attributed to a Swedish architect under very strong North German influence, but his reasons do not seem very conclusive.)