Gotlands guldålder: Kyrkor, konjunkturer och korståg

On Gotland medieval ruins and unfinished churches bear witness of a Golden Age, which suddenly was interrupted. With the enormous chancel ofKällunge as a point of departure I ask, why medieval Gotland declined. Hitherto the explanations have been a shift in the transit trade in the late 13th C., the civil war between Visby and the countryside in 1288, the Pla- gue of 1350, the invasion by the Danish king Valde- mar Atterdag 1361 or a rise of taxes by king Erik of Pomerania in 1412. Chronologies of the building activity at the churches, the town wall and the stone houses based on written sources, art history and den- dro chronology show however, that the turning point was already in the middle of the 13th C. I suggest, that the Golden Age of Gotland in the 13th C. was a war-economy created by the crusades in the Baltic. Gotland on one hand supported the crusaders and on the other hand sold weapons to the heathens. As the Baltic Rim was christianized the boom was over. The town and the countryside were now competitors on a shrinking market. The town concentrated on forti- fications, whereas the tradesmen of the countryside undermined their own position by ostentatious in- vestments in churches. The countryside continued a mentality ofofferings, where once silver hoards in the ground had been replaced by churches over ground.