Photos

This is a very little private owned stave church. Raised I think around 1975. It was a present from the hotel Manager at a nearby mountain hotel to his daughter. What to say: ‘Think big’! To day the little chapel is for use for weddings etc, very popular even if it is so small that only some 20-persons can be inside at one time. It is beautiful this little stave church. And even if the rule below is some hundreds year out of date it is a fine yardstick for anyone who should have their own stave church:

«If a man builds a church, whether he is a landlord or a farmer or somebody else, he must always keep it in good shape and never abandon the site. But if the church decays and the columns starts to fall, he must bring new within twelve months; and if he fails in doing so, he will be fined three Mark for his failure to the Bishop and still have to bring the timber and do the repair anyway».

The text above was copied from the Gulating Law, chapter 12, and translated into English. The Gulating was the main Court of Law in Southern and Western Norway once, and it was first written down during the 11th century. The value of one Mark was equal to approximately 0.44 lb of silver at the time this law was written down.

Finally some more info of our stave churches:
The Stave Church is a nearly 900-year-old wooden temple, which is truly unique to Norway. That a building constructed from stones would last a long time, is commonly understood, but that a structure of wood could last this long, is nothing but astounding.
These churches remain the oldest wooden structures in the world that survived into our time.

No, you can't experience a Stave Church by looking at a picture or a movie! You will need to sense it by its spirit and smell the 800-900 years of treatment by tar, turpentine and linseed oil to fully discover the importance of these rare relics of a past time in the history of Europe.