Skyum church /Skyum kirke, Hassing herred, Thisted amt.

Skyum Church


Altar piece from 1638


Pulpit from the end of the 1500s


Ashlar with three animal figures.

Skyum church is a Romanesque ashlar building with nave and choir and a later added tower and porch. In the choir are two original windows, one in the altar-wall is seen as an inside niche, while the other in the north wall is still in use. The north door in the nave is bricked-up, the south door at the porch is still in use. A picture ashlar in the southern side-wall of the nave close to the gable has a relief image of three animals. Upon the northern side-wall above the bricked-up door is a carved male head. In the late Middle Ages was built a tower in front of the western gable in yellow monk bricks, the years upon the tower: 1752 and 1879 refer to repairs. The newer porch of an unknown age is built in monk bricks.

The inside of the church has beamed ceilings while the tower room has traces from a demolished cross-vault. The choir arch is high and slim and origins from the Romanesque period. Upon the walls of the church were since 1889 several times found rests of frescoes, but they were removed since they were impossible to restore. The Romanesque communion table in granite ashlars has a plate with a reliquary and a carved front panel from ab. 1600; the altar piece from 1638 is a naive carved work . A former altar decoration hangs upon the northern side-wall of the nave. A Romanesque granite font with a runic inscription, the male name Kir. Upon the east wall of the nave is a choir arch crucifix from ab. 1500. A pulpit from the end of the 1500s, in the archade fields are painted the Evangelists from the 1700s. At the west end of the nave is a gallery from the first half of the 1600s. A medieval church bell cast in 1497 and recast in 1885. During a renovation in 1939 the church had new windows in choir and nave and new beamed ceilings in the nave; the choir got a ceiling from the old beams from the nave.


Gravehill, Skyum Bjerge

Names in the Middle Ages:Skyum (1555 Skyom,); Dybdal (*1467 Dybdal)

Listed prehistorics: 24 hills, of which a very pretty group of 7 hills on a listed area in Skyum Bjerge. in the southern part of the parish are the large hills Storehøj and Lillehøj, in the last mentioned are the rests of a stone grave.

Demolished or destroyed: 69 hills of which a large part were in Skyum Bjerge, one of the hills contained a grave from early Bronze Age with a dagger, a bøjlenål (jewelry) a gold ring etc.

Source: Trap Danmark, Thisted amt, 1961

photo August 2007: grethe bachmann