An Exceptional Twelfth-Century Tile Floor, Its Origins and the Network Behind It: Compositional Analysis of Tiles from St. Lawrence Church in Roskilde, Denmark

In 1931 an exceptional mosaic tile floor was excavated in the Romanesque St. Lawrence stone church in Roskilde, Denmark. Later excavations in the 1990s uncovered further knowledge of the building history of the church, which is dated to c. 1125. Although an absolute date of the floor is not available, this chapter argues that the mosaic floor was installed shortly after the completion of the stone church, possibly sometime in the second quarter of the twelfth century, thus making it one of the earliest examples of the use of tile in Denmark. The technique and design of the mosaic floor has no Scandinavian parallels, and the nearest comparable examples are found in twelfth-century churches in the Rhineland area of Western Germany. Compositional analysis indicates that the Roskilde St. Lawrence mosaic tiles were not produced locally, and it is suggested that they were imported from Western Germany.