Humlab Showcase

NordPoW
Nordic Places of Worship

2024–

NordPoW aims to develop a Nordic database and interactive map of churches and prayer houses to support research on the religious geography of the Nordic countries. The map visualizes religious patterns across time and space through filtering options and timeline functionality, and currently includes data from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

The project serves both as a research infrastructure and as a platform for conducting research on religious geography and related fields. At the same time, it contributes to documenting and preserving the cultural and historical heritage associated with Nordic churches and prayer houses.

This project is a collaboration between researchers, Humlab, and InfraVis. Read more about the project

Explore Application ▶
Map of the Nordic countries where each symbol is one registered place of worship; pale blue crosses mark Lutheran parish churches in all four countries, and the other categories are densest in Sweden and along the Norwegian coast The NordPoW map in the browser

People @ Humlab

In cooperation with

Legend panel for the map: places of worship grouped by denomination and movement, from national Lutheran churches to other or unknown Christian Color separates different religious affiliations, and shape defines Nordic subcategories of the affiliation

Each place of worship is registered in a classification of denominations and movements.

Map of the Swedish Bothnian coast with a timeline slider below it, set to 1950 to 1965 on an axis running from 1800 onwards, with play and skip buttons The time slider, showing how the religious landscape changes over time

Infrastructure

InfraVis logotype

Development techniques

ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online Experience Builder QGIS OpenRefine