When Vikings Built Churches
Norway’s 1000-year-old stave churches are upside-down ships
“King Olaf ruled Norway with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. Anyone who refused to convert, he beheaded.”
I had slipped into a 900-year-old wooden, stave church with a tour group while their Norwegian guide was giving her zealous spiel about the Christianisation of Viking lands that took place a thousand years ago — when the sacred places of old gods were burned to the ground, and new churches were built for the new religion.
Almost two thousand of these wooden ‘stave’ churches were erected throughout Norway from 1030 to 1350. Only 28 have survived to the present day. While throughout Europe most churches were built out of stone, the vikings were masters at building with wood. Ship-building is what the vikings knew. So, when it came to building churches, they applied familiar knoweldge to an unfamiliar task. Look at the swooping dragon heads attached to the upper gables: these are exactly like the prow of a viking longship.
This church (above) from the town of Gol, was dismantled and moved, piece by piece, to the outdoor folk museum in Oslo, where it is the crown jewel of the collection. The tour guide continued: “If you look at the wooden ceiling, you can see how it is constructed like the upside-down hull of a ship.
The tour guide next talked about the mast-like staves. Four eight-meter-high, whole timbers had been turned into giant columns supporting the church’s frame. The builders prepped the staves the same way vikings prepped ship masts. To make the wood impervious to the elements, the they lopped all the branches off talls pine and left them standing in the forest for few years. The trees would swell with sap, seeking to repair their many wounds, filling the marked trees full of resin, which acts like a preservative. The seasoned staves were then cut, and erected on a stone foundation to keep away rot. The rest of the church was built around this frame.
Several hundred years is a long time for wood to last, so almost all stave churches have disappeared. Of the 28 that remain, all but one suffered severe neglect and damage. A few dozen survivors were extensively restored in the late 1800s, and today many of these are recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The features of these reconstructed churches are modeled after the single church that has maintained its original structure. Built around 1200, the Borgund church, in central Norway, was a place of active worship until 1868. Teresa (my beloved wife) and I also visited it on our trip:
The black color of the church roof and walls comes from numerous coatings of pitch — a tar-like substance derived from pine resin that the Vikings used to seal their ships and make them watertight. It worked just as well to seal the walls and roofs of their churches.
The Borgund Stave Church also features both Christian and Old Norse iconography, such as snakes and wolves on the exquisitely carved doorways. In some stave churches, there are even heads carved into roof beams that look more like the old gods than any recognizable icons of saints. Perhaps the Vikings were hedging their bets with the new religion by including protective symbols of the old ways?
Teresa adores the stave churches: “On the outside, they look like incredible, ominous, awe-inspiring pieces of art,” she told me. “The dark wood and swooping dragons on the roofs remind me of Thai spirit houses. And then you walk inside, and it’s like a warm embrace. The wood interiors feel so cosy and intimate. It must have felt like such a safe place to enter, especially during the cold, northern winters. And the colors they painted on the inside are so exuberant, bursting with color and life. I can imagine what it must have been like to walk through a grey and white winter into a world of luscious blues, golds, and reds….”
These vibrant interior hues were fully restored in the Ringbu Church in a rural community near Lillehammer. It’s one of the few stave churches still operating as a church. Here, the staves were painted a mottled blue to look like marble columns. The light from the central chandelier filled the interior and made the wooden beams and ceiling appear to glow.
I could sense the beauty, too, in these churches. Yet they left me feeling conflicted. I felt the clash of symbols: the old religion and the new trying to cohabit the same space. I think it’s because what I admired most about Norwegians of the Viking era was their fierce sense of independence and autonomy. Christianity, back then, was not about repenting one’s sins and coming to Jesus. But rather about submitting to a new world order — an order where a national king ruled on behalf of the One True God.
The first Viking to conquer his own people in the name of God was King Harald Bluetooth. He united all of Denmark under his rule (985–86), and briefly conquered Norway. Bluetooth was the first king to grasp how the new religion could legitimize his consolidation of power. Christianity was a useful tool for defeating rebellious earls and chieftains because the new faith required rivals to submit to God’s authority, and therefore to the king’s authority, because the king was God’s representative on earth. In the 21st Century, a Danish tech company took Bluetooth’s name for their wireless communication devices, as a symbol of the unity their technology could create for their customers.
A decade later, King Olaf Tryggvason (ruled 995–1000 AD) used torture and the threat of execution to convert Norwegians to the new faith. Eventually, they revolted. They rose up against Olaf, and killed him in battle. A third attempt, by Olaf Haraldsson (ruled 1015–1028) finished the job. “Saint Olaf” as he is remembered, brought back the “sword or cross” conversion policy, and conclusively made Christianity the official religion of Norway in 1020. That date marked the end of the Viking Era.
Today, Norwegians are perhaps the least religious people in the world. While 69% are officially members of the Lutheran Church of Norway, only 2% attend any church at all. This is not hard to explain. Norwegians love their traditions, their culture, and their country. Their national church is a part of that. But on Sunday they prefer to hike, ski, bike, climb, or fish. Their religion has become their great outdoors. That’s a faith I’m ready to sign up for.
