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Two women inside Varnhems Church.

Photographer: André Nordblom

Find your way around Varnhem Abbey Church

Varnhem Abbey Church has beautiful interiors, well worth exploring. Here you can read more about the furnishings and see where in the church you can view them.

  1. Organ loft, parts from the 17th century. Organ from 1968. The organ facade made as a copy based on images of the 17th-century original.

  2. The lay brothers' altar with the grave of Birger Jarl. The lid handles are adorned with an image of Birger Jarl, his son Duke Erik, and his second wife, Dowager Queen Mechtild of Denmark.

  3. Inge the Elder's grave according to oral tradition.

  4. Pulpit from the 17th century, crafted by George Baselaque with the seven virtues, whose symbols are carried by Greek women. Love, patience, faith, hope, truth, justice, courage. 

  5. A founder's image with Birger Jarl in a ducal crown beside Christ in a crown of thorns. (High up on the pillar as a console)

  6. Baptismal font from the latter part of the 13th century from Skarke Church, which served as the parish church until 1566.

  7. Sacristy with medieval piscina (drainage bowl for the rinsing water of communion vessels)

  8. A room for prayers. Here is a sculpture of Mary that was inaugurated in 2019. The gate leading to the cemetery is called Porta mortuorum, the gate of death. Even today, the dead are carried out to the cemetery through it, just as in the Middle Ages.

  9. Procession and the monks' prayer chapel. In the 17th century, memorial rooms were furnished for the kings Knut Eriksson, Erik Knutsson, Erik Eriksson the Lisp and Lame, Inge the Elder, and Birger Jarl.

  10. The De la Gardie Memorial Hall with statues of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie and his father Jakob De la Gardie. Burial chamber for Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie and Maria Euphrosyne on the right, as well as for their son Gustav Adolf De la Gardie and Elisabeth Oxenstierna on the left. The De la Gardie funeral weapons and dignity banners.

  11. The monks' entrance from the abbey.

  12. Choir carpet, Walk of Life, by Agda Österberg 1951.

  13. Graves of the House of Erik.

  14. Thrones for Karl XI and Ulrika Eleonora.

  15. The high altar from the 13th century with unusual colonettes and a reliquary. Altarpiece from the 17th century by George Baselaque with Moses on the left and Christ on the right symbolising Law and Gospel. Angels with the symbols of suffering. Above, angels with the sweat cloth and the crown of thorns, and Christ in the middle. Altarpiece by Aureller the Younger from the 18th century.