St. Nicolai Church dates to the 13th century. Originally built in late Romanesque style and dedicated to the patron saint of merchants and seafarers, the church is the oldest building in the community. Renovations in the 15th century developed the church into a Gothic hall with two transepts and a tower 27.2 m high.
On display in a glass-covered sarcophagus in the northern transept are the remains of the Haraldskær Woman, one of the best conserved of the iron age bog bodies. The southern transept houses the sarcophagi of Kai de la Mare and his wife. The exterior brick wall of the north transept has an interesting feature of 23 spherical indentations approximately 15 cm in diameter, which hold the skulls of 23 robbers who were caught and beheaded in the nearby Nørreskov forest. In front of the church stands a sculpture of the priest Anders Sørensen Vedel.
The church was seriously damaged during the Thirty Years' War by the Catholic troops of Wallenstein. Since that time it has undergone several major restorations: in 1744, 1855-56, 1887-88 and 1964-66.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.