Discover Top Posts Tagged with #stave churches

Inside Borgund Stave Church, Lærdal, Vestland, Norway

Soapstone baptismal font, c. 1125-1150, showing Christ, Mary and the apostles. The font is large enough to immerse the entire body of the chid, as was the medieval custom. Skjeberg church, Skjeberg, Østfold, Norway

#norway #stave churches

I special interested sooo hard today that I got choked up and tearful bc we visited the Norske Folkemuseum. They have reconstructed buildings from all over the country like farmhouses and logger huts, but the thing that got me was the stave church.

[Image description: a full size reconstruction of a historical Norwegian stave church. It is a tall building, primarily made of dark wood, with four roofed tiers that make it look a bit like four increasingly small buildings stacked atop one another. /End ID]

Just,, the way that Christian and pre-Christian symbolism is meshed together and incorporated into the architecture makes my brain go brrrrrrr. There's a medieval biblical mural inside and decorative carvings of Jormungandr on pillars outside (not pictured) and dragon heads on the topmost gables. It makes me need to lie down I love it so much. There are only 28 stave churches still standing in Norway iirc but they're a testament to how culture is about interwoven threads of history and how people still took time to Make Art even in such hard conditions. Most beloved

#Stave churches

Me and my husband visited Scandinavia quite a lot and stave churches always grab our attention. This one is called ‘Gol Stave Church’. Originally from Gol (Norway) but has been reconstructed then moved to Oslo (Norway). Photo taken by me.