Church of the Holy Spirit

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The Helligåndskirken is the Copenhagen Holy Spirit Church. The Lutheran parish church is located in the center of the Danish capital. It was built around 1300 and belonged to a Catholic monastery until the Reformation. Like many buildings in Copenhagen, it suffered severe damage in the city fire of 1728. Among other things, the interior of the church was completely destroyed.

Helligåndskirken: Architecture and worship

An outbuilding still remains of the original building, it is now the largest medieval building in Copenhagen and is used for events and exhibitions. The church is very much used by the Greenlandic community of Copenhagen for their church services. Therefore, a service of the Eskimo language Inuktitut is held once a month. The term Inuktitut is used for all Eskimo languages, including dialects related to Greenlandic. There is also a separate dialect, Inuktitut, which is not an official language in Greenland but is closely related to Greenlandic. Inuktitut means "language of man", and is actually the language of the Eastern Canadian Eskimos. In Newfoundland and Labrador it is one of the official languages.

Furnishings and organ of Helligåndskirken

The furnishings include the altar, pulpit, a modern baptismal fountain and a historic baptismal font. The organ, built in 1879 by Knud Olsen, is remarkable. It was restored in 1986 by Marcussen & Søn, an organ-building company known throughout Europe and the world. The Danish organ building company has a similar reputation among our neighbours as, for example, the historical organ building company Silbermann. It is also older, Jürgen Marcussen founded it in 1806 and initially built in the baroque style. After 1900, the company made excursions into new technical organ territory, which proved to be an aberration. Since the late 1920s, Marcussen & Søn has again been building mechanical organs with open voicing and is accordingly also capable of restoring historic models. The company has been a pioneer in researching historical organ building developments and has gained international renown as a result. The organ in Helligåndskirken has 75 stops on four manuals and uses mechanical action, but electric stop action. It is well worth hearing.

How do I get to Helligåndskirken?