C O N T E X T 1 1 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 0 29 Nick Molyneux Norwegian stave churches Twenty-nine of Norway’s stave churches survive. A visit to all of them (except the one moved to Poland) revealed remarkable workmanship and careful conservation. June 2009 was the perfect time to visit Norway, with wonderful warm perpetual sunshine and almost 24 hours of daylight. Norway is a country of stunning scenery: as you turn every corner an even more spectacular vista is revealed. In a three-week visit to Norway I drove 2,500 miles to see all 28 of the surviving stave churches in the country. What is a stave church? They are all built of timber, but it depends upon which country you are in. In Denmark and Sweden the staves refer to the walls of the church, vertical planks slotted into the grooved sill beams and wall plates.While the Norwegian churches use this form of wall construction, the definition refers to the main posts which support the structure, the word in Norwegian meaning mast or post in English. We have no similar churches in England except possibly at Greensted juxta Ongar in Essex. This is dated by tree rings to the late 11th century, but only has a version of the plank walling technique, not the true Norwegian staves. The staves of Norway are each formed from a single pine tree, but they are not like telegraph poles. Rather they are elegant pieces of workmanship of considerably more craftsmanship than they at first appear.The tree trunk is pared down to form the individual post, often with an integral projecting capital and slender tapering tops leading up to the masks found at the head of many of them. Many of the intervening posts are oval in plan, which implies yet further hard work paring the tree to shape. There is no use of curved timbers, except for the knee bracing which is found extensively in the roofs and the bracing of the aisles. This was usually cut from naturally curved timbers, which it is clear on examination of the grain was from the junction with roots or branches. Almost the only timber used was pine (oak was mainly reserved for ship building). Wherever I went I was told about the methods of killing the pine tree by cutting off the top, removing the branches and the bark, and then leaving the tree to stand for up to 30 years before felling. If true, then it has considerable implications for the churches which have been tree ring dated: the felling date would be considerably Borgund church with the new visitor centre in the background The island church of Grip: 18th and 19th century votive ships are a common decoration in the churches
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