Nobelmen and women, in fancy clothing and pearls – but with dragon wings and tails. A laughing man with a full head of curly hair. Lions biting the ears off a man whose mouth is full of writhing serpents. These may sound like a weird combination of a gothic novel and a nightmare, but they're something completely different – a description of some of the eerie and surprising sculptures in Nidaros Cathedral, the northernmost gothic cathedral in the world that's located in NTNU's hometown of Trondheim.

But what were the messages that stonemasons and religious leaders were trying to send visitors to the cathedral – and how do we interpret these messages 800 years later?

My guests on today's show are Øystein Ekroll, chief archaeologist and researcher at the Nidaros Cathedral Restoration Workshop and Margrete Syrstad Andås, an art historian and associate professor at NTNU's Department of Art and Media Studies.

You can read more about the history of the cathedral in this article from Norwegian SciTech News: Thousand-year-old cathedral surrenders its secrets, stone by stone

• Øystein Ekroll has an article about the building history of the cathedral from 1030 to 1537 that you can find here.
• Øystein's PhD dissertation is available here: The Octagonal Shrine Chapel of St Olav at Nidaros Cathedral
• Øystein and Margrete have also edited a book about the cathedral:

Andås, Margrete Syrstad, Øystein Ekroll Andreas Haug and Nils Holger Petersen, eds,

The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim: Architectural and Ritual Constructions in their European Context

(Traditions and Transformations 3), Turnhout, Brepols, 2007

• Andås, Margrete Syrstad. “Art and Ritual in the Liminal Zone.” In he Medieval cathedral of Trondheim : architectural and ritual constructions in their European context. Eds. Margrete Syrstad Andås, Øystein Ekroll, Andreas Haug and Nils Holger Petersen. Turnhout 2007: 47–126.
• Andås, Margrete Syrstad. ”The Octagon Doorway: A Question of Purity and Danger?” In Ornament and Order. Essays on Viking and Northern Medieval Art for Signe Horn Fuglesang. Edited by Margrethe C.Stang and Kristin B. Aavitsland, 97-134. Trondheim: Tapir, 2008.

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