Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one. I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking. This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.
Roskilde Cathedral is one of the great historic Protestant Church buildings, but I've chosen it for my World Cup blog partly because I've been there and mostly because it is peculiar in losing people who are already dead. In a Northern Europe where Protestant churches lose the living at an alarming rate, it is a mildly concerning thought that they can go missing after being dead too.
More directly still, this blog dates from the period of the death of Queen Elizabeth II of England (and other places). Roskilde Cathedral has been thought to be the burial place of a previous monarch of England - Sweyn Forkbeard.
Sweyn reigned for a short time in England - less than two months in fact - though he had been King of Denmark for nearly 30 years. His short reign was not helped by London which, true to form, refused to accept him and delayed his accession when provincials like Winchester, Bath and Oxford readily, though fearfully, bowed the knee.
On his untimely death his remains were returned to Scandinavia (as we now call it) and thought to be to Roskilde. Now, however, historians think it was somewhere else - in today's Sweden.
Then there's his father Harold Bluetooth. He was long thought to be in Roskilde until an attempt to actually find his bones was made - and none could be found.
During the long procession of people filing past the Lying-in-State of the late Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Hall there were few moments of mishap. But one poor chap lunged at her (closed) coffin, apparently because he wanted to make sure she was there and dead. Predictably he was bundled off to a Mental Health facility. Predictably perhaps, but maybe he knew the stories of the royals of (or not of) Roskilde and had historical grounds for his doubts!
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