Norwegian Stave Churches

 

Heddal Church

My brother and I had been walking for hours along a two lane Norwegian highway when the Heddal Stave Church appeared like a mirage in the rain. Rural Norway didn’t have a taxi service. We were both too young to rent a car. We were too shy to ask for help, and we couldn’t read Norwegian road signs. So we were left to walk the five miles from the bus stop to the largest of the 28 remaining Norwegian Stave churches. 

Out in the middle of a large field, the majestic wooden church loomed like a mysterious fortress. Built sometime in the 12th Century, Heddal was the largest of historic wooden churches scattered across the fjords and rolling hills of Norway. Our mission was to visit as many churches as we could and learn how these wooden buildings had lasted nearly a millennium in the harsh, wet climate of Norway. The small scholarship from Montana State University barely budgeted for one person, but on a diet of refried beans and crackers, I managed to fit my brother into the trip. I declared him the official photographer while scurried around and sketched the incredible joinery that held the buildings together. We were flat broke and our legs ached for days, but these churches were worth the effort. 

Around the mid 1100’s, as the Viking era faded and the missionaries from Rome made their way further north, little wooden churches started popping up in villages all over Norway. Built with the same technology as the Viking boats that allowed warriors to cross the wild northern oceans, the stave churches have endured longer than any other wooden buildings in the word. Built before the invention of nails or metal fasteners, the few remaining churches are masterpieces of intricate joinery and wood preservation. 

Inside the Heddal church, old growth staves sixty feet long and three feet in diameter towered into the gloom of the distant ceiling. Wooden pegs secured elaborately carved bracing, decorated with dragons and warriors from Scandinavian legends. Hand carved shingles covered every surface, coated in pine pitch for preservation. A church service was in session, so we sat and waited on creaky benches that were older than our grandparents’ grandparents. Built entirely from hand hewn lumber, the craftsmanship was simultaneously rustic and ornamental. 

We explored 14 of the 28 churches, each one unique and yet all containing echoes of each other. During the mid 1800’s to mid 1900’s, the traditional churches were abandoned en masse for modern buildings and left to decay. As Norwegian society modernized, they often sought to distance themselves from their traditional histories. While dozens of churches were lost to fire and renewal, amazingly, a few endured as barns, sheds or just forgotten relics. Eventually, times changed again and the remaining churches were restored to glory using traditional tools and methods. Those methods like hand carved shingles were specifically taught to young craftsmen so they could be passed to the next generation of caretakers. Fire suppression systems were carefully installed to be invisible and most of the stave churches became destinations for church services again, even in the harsh Norwegian winters. 

Across Norway, locals were thrilled to share their village church’s history over traditional breakfasts of stinky fish oils, pickles and cheeses. We were fascinated by the history, but less stoked on the traditional diets. More than once, we both hid the strange food in our sweatshirt pockets so it looked like we had cleaned our plates, then scarfed a PB+J in the hall afterward. 

Eventually, unable to eat any more refried beans, we returned home with a treasure trove of scribbles, photos and drawings that were put on display in the Cheever Gallery at MSU. In just twelve hours on a modern airplane, it was a strange jump from the methodical, timeless hills of Norway to the fast-changing metropolis of Bozeman that seems to evolve by the day. 

As I sat down to write this month’s column, I intended to write something about how everything in Montana seems to be changing very quickly, almost too quickly. Instead, I remembered the conversations with caretakers of the oldest wooden buildings on Earth in accented Norwegian. Times of change come and go. History is by definition multi-generational. It comes in all forms; from architecture to wilderness. Every generation is going to add a little something new to history, but no generation has the right to decide what is worth preserving. Not everything old is historic and not everything historic is old. The challenge each generation faces is knowing which is which. Maybe looking at the Stave Churches can help us decide.