Vang stave church - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Vang stave church is a stave church

Stave church

A stave church is a medieval wooden church with a post and beam construction related to timber framing. The wall frames are filled with vertical planks. The load-bearing posts have lent their name to the building technique...

which was bought by the Prussian King and transferred from Vang in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

and re-erected in 1842 in Brückenberg near Krummhübel in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, now Karpacz

Karpacz

Karpacz is a spa town and ski resort in Jelenia Góra County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, south-western Poland, and one of the most important centres for mountain hiking and skiing, including ski jumping. Its population is about 5,000...

in the Karkonosze

Karkonosze

Krkonoše is a mountain range located in the north of the Czech Republic and the south-west of Poland, part of the Sudetes mountain system . The Czech-Polish border, which divides the historic regions of Bohemia and Silesia, runs along the main ridge...

mountains of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

.

The church is a four-post single-nave stave church originally built around 1200 in the parish of Vang in the Valdres

Valdres

Valdres is a traditional district in central, southern Norway, situated between Gudbrandsdal and Hallingdal.Administratively, Valdres belongs to Oppland. It consists of the municipalities Nord-Aurdal, Sør-Aurdal, Øystre Slidre, Vestre Slidre, Vang and Etnedal. The main town in the region is...

region of Norway.

History

In 1832 the local council decided to pull down the stave church because it was too small and had become structurally unsafe over the years. The plans for its demolition and replacement were known already in 1826, when the painter Johan Christian Dahl

Johan Christian Dahl

Johan Christian Claussen Dahl , often known as was a Norwegian landscape painter, who was connected to the Norwegian romantic nationalism. He is often considered have been "the father of Norwegian landscape painting"....

made the first attempt to save it. He urged the council to repair and extend it.

There was also an attempt to have it re-erected at Heensåsen in the same parish as an annex church. Knut Nordsveen, a local farmer, offered to donate the building site to the community, but his offer was rejected. Disappointed by the rebuff, he later sold his farm and emigrated to America. In 1932 a monument was erected in memory of him.

Relocation

While traveling in Norway in 1839, J. C. Dahl again visited Vang. He found the stave church still standing, beside a newly built larger log-built church seating 230 parishioners. Demolition of the old one was imminent. Dahl was more than ever convinced that the stave church must be preserved as a cultural monument. He proposed without success to have it re-erected as a Royal Chapel in Christiania

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, or as a museum church adjacent to the medieval Haakon's Hall in Bergen. Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg

Johan Caspar Herman Wedel-Jarlsberg

Johan Caspar Herman Wedel-Jarlsberg was a politician and a Norwegian count, one of only two titled noblemen in Norway...

announced his willingness to place it in his park at Bogstad

Bogstad

Bogstad is a former estate and now neighborhood in the borough of Vestre Aker in Oslo, Norway.It has its origin in a farm by the same name, near the lake Bogstadvannet. The farm was owned by several notable people...

manor near Christiania, but he died before the plan could be carried out.

Dahl saw no other way than to buy the church himself. He asked the vicar of Vang to bid on his behalf at the public auction

Public auction

A public auction is an auction held on behalf of a government in which the property to be auctioned is either property owned by the government, or property which is sold under the authority of a court of law or a government agency with similar authority....

held in January of 1841. Dahl won the bid at 86 speciedaler, 1 ort and 7 skilling, on the condition that the site was cleared by the end of the year. Accused of being a speculant, Dahl defended himself by stating that his only intention was to rescue the church, and that he had no intention of making money from the deal.

The solution came from Crown Prince, later King Frederick William IV of Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

, whom Dahl knew personally. After the exchange of several letters, he persuaded the prince to take over responsibility for the Vang stave church and cover the costs of re-erecting it in Potsdam

Potsdam

Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

.

The task of surveying the church, marking the materials, supervising the dismantling and preparing for the transportation was entrusted to the young German architect Franz Wilhelm Schiertz, who had helped Dahl to make the plates for his book on the stave churches, and who was probably also known to the Crown Prince. Schiertz did pioneering work in documentation and planning for an enterprise without precedent. His drawings and inventories are now priceless sources of knowledge about the original appearance of the stave church. All pieces were marked and packed for transportation during the summer. In September they were delivered at the harbour of Lærdalsøyri

Lærdalsøyri

Lærdalsøyri is the administrative centre of the municipality of Lærdal in Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway. The village is located along the Lærdalselvi river where it empties into the Lærdalsfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord. The village is located about north of the east end of the Lærdal Tunnel...

at the head of the Sognefjord

Sognefjord

The Sognefjord is the largest fjord in Norway, and the second longest in the world. Located in Sogn og Fjordane county, it stretches inland to the small village of Skjolden...

, where they were loaded on board the Haabet, bound for
Stettin

Szczecin

Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....

. Upon arrival in Stettin after two months at sea, the materials were transferred onto a barge for the last leg of the journey to Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, where they were stored during the winter in the courtyard of the Altes Museum

Altes Museum

The Altes Museum , is one of several internationally renowned museums on Museum Island in Berlin, Germany. Since restoration work in 1966, it houses the Antikensammlung of the Berlin State Museums...

.

The original plan had been to re-erect the church on the Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island) in Potsdam. But in the meantime, this plan was discarded in favour of a site at the remote village of Brückenberg near Krummhübel in the Riesengebirge, now the Karkonosze

Karkonosze

mountains, in the province of Schlesien

Silesia

Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...

. The idea probably came from countess Friederike von Reden of Buchwald, now Bukowiec

Bukowiec, Jelenia Góra County

Bukowiec is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Mysłakowice, within Jelenia Góra County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Prior to 1945 it was in Germany. It lies approximately south-east of Mysłakowice, south-east of Jelenia Góra, and west of the regional...

, whose memorial stands beside the church. Count Christian Leopold von Schaffgotsch of Warmbrunn, now Cieplice

Jelenia Góra

----Jelenia Góra is a city in Lower Silesia, south-western Poland. The name of the city means "deer mountain" in Polish, Czech and German. It is close to the Krkonoše mountain range running along the Polish-Czech border – ski resorts such as Karpacz and Szklarska Poręba can be found...

, donated the site.

In the spring of 1842 the materials were again taken by river barge up the Oder

Oder

The Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, later forming of the border between Poland and Germany, part of the Oder-Neisse line...

to the foothills, and from there by wagon to the mountain village of Krummhübel

Karpacz

. The new site for the church lays 885 meters above sea level in Brückenberg, about half way between Krummhübel and the peak of the Schneekoppe Mountain

Snežka-Sniezka

Sněžka or Śnieżka is a mountain on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland, the most prominent point of the Silesian Ridge in the Krkonoše mountains...

Re-erection

The foundation stone was laid on August 2, 1842 in the presence of King Friedrich Wilhelm himself. It was a demanding task for carpenters who had never seen the church, nor any stave church, to rebuild it correctly. In spite of excellent drawings, most of the materials were discarded. Only the main construction, consisting of sills, posts and wall plates, were made use of, in addition to the carved doorframes. All of the external gallery was built with new materials, and every wall plank was replaced.

The long lost apse was reconstructed, albeit with a very strange baroque roof. The gallery and the flèche were reconstructed, but several new windows without historical precedent were put in. The doorways were turned inside out, with the carvings facing inward. The decorated ceiling above the choir was not restored, probably because it seemed too Catholic in a Protestant church. All the original roof trusses were renewed.

The work took two years and the total cost amounted to more than 75 000 marks. On the King's birthday, October 15, 1843, the flèche with the date 1200 was raised. On July 27, 1844 Prince Frederick of the Netherlands together with huge crowds witnessed the consecration of "Die Bergkirche unseres Erlösers zu Wang" (The mountain church of Our Savior of Vang). The former owner J. C. Dahl was not present, but he was happy to know that his project had been realised. He was spared the burden of preserving only certain decorated elements, and pleased that "a fair likeness" had been rebuilt.

Now serving a Polish

Poland

community, Wang church has become a major tourist attraction and is probably the world's most visited stave church with about 200 000 visitors each year.

The Original Building

The layout with four internal posts or staves is common to several stave churches in the Valdres

Valdres

region. But in the stave churches of Høre

Høre stave church

Høre stave church is a stave church located at Ryfoss in Vang municipality, Valdres, Norway. It was built in 1180 and rebuilt around 1820...

and Lomen

Lomen stave church

Lomen stave church is a stave church located in the community of Lomen in Vestre Slidre municipality, Valdres, Norway. It was built in the second half of the 12th century....

they are incorporated into a construction with a raised roof above the central part of the nave, whereas the churches of Vang and Øye

Øye stave church

Øye stave church is situated in Øye, a village in the municipality of Vang, Oppland county, Norway. It is a triple nave stave church and dates from the second half of the 12th century. The church was situated next to the lake Vangsmjøse in Øye. Here, however, the river Rødøla would flood almost...

have ordinary saddle roofs, with no structural connection between the roof and the interior posts.

According to tradition, the church had been relocated once before at an earlier date, confirming the opinion of many scholars that it was much altered before leaving Vang. The Norwegian architect Arne Berg has after thorough examination of the rebuilt church concluded that the remaining original materials belonged to a stave church of the Sogn

Sogn

Sogn is a traditional district in Western Norway . It is located in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, surrounding the Sognefjord. Sogn consists of the municipalities of Aurland, Balestrand, Hyllestad, Høyanger, Gulen, Leikanger, Luster, Lærdal, Sogndal, Solund, Vik, and Årdal. The district covers ...

type with a raised roof above the central part of the nave. Dating evidence is, however, scant. He estimates it to have been built around 1200 — confirming the rather dubious date inscribed in 1843. It may have been rebuilt already in the medieval period, but perhaps as late as 1600.

Runic inscription N 83

There is a runic inscription listed in Rundata

Rundata

The Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future research...

as N 83 located on the doorway of the church, of which the expert Magnus Olsen

Magnus Olsen

Magnus Bernhard Olsen was a Norwegian linguist and a professor in Norse philology at the University of Oslo from 1908 to 1948...

has proposed the translation: " Eindridi the dexterous carved (the doorway), the son of Olav of Lo" (Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

: Eindriði skar, mjáfingr, sonr Ólafs á Ló). If this is the correct interpretation, the inscription identifies the artist. His name was Eindridi, his nickname was "dexterous" or "handy", and his father was Olav of Lo. In 1937, the inscription was reported as badly damaged and hardly readable. The interpretations of the inscriptions are based on copies made before the church was moved.

Literature

Berg, Arne, Stavkyrkja frå Vang og hennar lange ferd, Foreningen til norske Fortidsminnesmerkers bevaring, Årbok 1980, vol. 134, p. 105-140

External links

Vang stave church in Poland — in English, Polish, German

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.