URNES STAVE CHURCH

Urnes stave church (Norwegian: Urnes stavkirke) is a stave church at the Ornes farm, near Lustrafjorden in Luster municipality, Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway.

Architectural type Architectural style Year completed

Stave church Romanesque 1132? (dendrochronological dating) Specifications Timber

Materials

The church was built around 1130 or shortly thereafter, and still stands in its original location. The church is believed to be the oldest of its kind. It provides a link between Christian architecture and the architecture and artforms of the Viking Age with typical animal-ornamentation, the so called "Urnes-style" of animal-art. Archaeological investigations have discovered the remains of one, or possibly two, churches on the site prior to the current building. The excavations uncovered holes in the ground from earth-bound posts which had belonged to an early post church, a type of church with walls supported by short sills inserted between free-standing posts. It is not known if this church had a raised roof above the central space of the nave like the present church. The earliest possible dating of this church is the early 11th century. In the 17th century the nave of the church, which is a raised central room surrounded by an aisle, was extended southwards. Other elements were also added to the church, including a baptismal font (1640), a wooden canopy above the altar (1665) and a pulpit (16931695). The altarpiece, which depicts Christ on the cross with the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, dates from 1699. Windows were added to the church in the 18th century.

North portal

The portal and other details of the north wall of the present church, as well as the wall planks of the gables, are decorated in classic Urnes-style. They are probably relics from one of the earlier churches. It has been speculated that the portal may originally have been the main portal, facing west. There have been numerous attempts to interpret the decoration (iconography) of the church's most remarkable part, the old portal in the northern wall. The images are generally considered to represent a snake curling upwards. At the lower end there is an animal with four feet biting the snake. A common interpretation of this scene is that it portrays the eternal fight between good and evil. The animal is widely believed to be a stylised lion. In Christian iconography the lion is a symbol of Christ, fighting the evil symbolized by the snake, a common representation of Satan. On the other hand, it is possible that the decoration of the earlier church featured some scenes from Norse mythology, a likely reason for its premature reconstruction in the 12th century. In this context, the animal may be interpreted as Nhggr eating the roots of Yggdrasil. "The intertwined snakes and dragons represent the end of the world according to the Norse legend of Ragnark".[1]

The present building

The church is built with a rectangular nave and a narrower choir. The nave and choir both have raised central spaces. The choir was extended to the east in the 17th century, but this addition was later removed. The drawing by I. C. Dahl depicts this, as well as the deteriorated state of the church at that time. During the 20th century the church underwent a restoration, and the richly decorated wall planks were covered to stop further deterioration. A large number of medieval constructive elements remain in situ: ground beams (grunnstokker), sills (sviller), corner posts (hjrnestolper), wall planks (veggtiler) and aisle wall plates (stavlgjer). The construction of the raised central area with staves, strings and cross braces, and the roof itself, also date from medieval times. From the previous church on the site remain, in addition to the portal, two wall planks in the northern wall, the corner post of the choir, the western gable of the nave and the eastern gable of the choir.

Urnes Stave Church , the oldest of Norway's stave churches, is included on UNESCO's World Heritage List. It was built around 1130 AD, but the distinctive carvings on the north portal are from an even older church. Samples taken from the base timbers show that the timber was felled between 1129 and 1131. Besides the present church, there have been two other stave churches on the same site. The last of them was built in the second half of the 11th century. Parts of this building have been incorporated into the present church: a portal, exterior planks and a corner stave, decorated with superb carvings that have been designated the Urnes style. The stave churches are unique and are Norway's most important contribution to world architecture. Urnes Stave Church, which is owned by the Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments, was added to the World Heritage List in 1980.