Podcast: Download

SSA055: Built without a single nail — held together by wooden pegs, gravity, and the skills of craftsmen who also built Viking longships — Norway’s medieval stave churches are among the most extraordinary buildings in Christian history. Hidden in mountain valleys, adorned with dragon heads and intricate knotwork, and built from the inside out, they survived wars, the Reformation, arsonists, and 800 years of Scandinavian winters. Once thought to number over 2,000 across Norway, only 23 original medieval examples remain.

Kathryn Laffrey and Alix Murray take a deep look at stave church history in this episode — what stavkirke are, how they were built, why they were built, and what happened to most of them. The episode covers the Byzantine and Gothic influences that shaped the churches: Norse traders and mercenaries who visited Constantinople and Jerusalem returned home with architectural ideas that fused with their indigenous visual traditions. Alix argues that makes them genuinely Catholic buildings — East and West, blended with local culture, elevating rather than erasing what came before.

Each church gets its own story. The Vang Stavkirke, built around 1180 and nearly demolished by a local council in 1832, was rescued by Norwegian painter Johan Christian Dahl with the help of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and physically dismantled and relocated to what is now Karpacz, Poland. The Røldal Stavkirke is Alix’s first pilgrimage destination — home to a crucifix associated with miracles, where Catholic Mass was celebrated for the first time in 500 years during her pilgrimage there. The Urnes Stave Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is famous for its carvings: a stylized lion biting a serpent — Christ defeating Satan — surrounded by protective knotwork at the entrance. When its Lady Chapel was removed during the Reformation, the building began to lean. The episode also covers the Fantoft Stave Church near Bergen, burnt to the ground by an arsonist in 1992 and rebuilt in 1997 using medieval tools and old-growth pine.

Kathryn adds the American chapter: the stave church replicas that Norwegian immigrants built across the Midwest — including an exact replica of the Borgund Stave Church in Rapid City, South Dakota — and the remarkable story of a stave pavilion built for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that crossed the Atlantic, traveled across the US, served as a movie theater, and eventually made it back to Norway when a grandson recognized his grandfather’s hand-carved ornaments inside.

Get all new episodes automatically and for free:

Follow by Email | Watch this episode and subscribe on YouTube.

Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeAmazon MusicTuneInRSS

Help us continue to offer The Secrets of Sacred Art. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

• Stave Church – EBSCO Research Starters
• Stave Church – Britannica
• StaveChurch.com
• Stavkirke.info
• Greensted Church – Wikipedia
• Urnes Stave Church – UNESCO World Heritage
• Borgund Stave Church – ArchEyes
• Røldal Stave Church – God’s Collections
• What Is a Stave Church? – StaveChurch.com
• Stave Churches – Visit Norway
• Vang Stavkirke – Store Norske Leksikon
• Fantoft Stave Church – Visit Bergen
• Urnesportalen Avdukes – Vigga.no
• Leper Squints – History: The Interesting Bits
• Stave in the USA – ArcGIS StoryMaps
• Frozen – Elsa’s Coronation (HD)
• World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris – Disney Parks Blog
• There and Back: Eight Surviving Structures of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
• Project Heimatt: The Norway Building Returns Home – Norwegian American

• Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Email us feedback or comments to [email protected]

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.