Eidsborg Stave Church

Eidsborg Stave Church
Eidsborg Stave Church Location of the church Eidsborg Stave Church Eidsborg Stave Church (Norway)
59°27′52″N 8°1′18″E
Location	Eidsborg, Tokke, Vestfold og Telemark
Country	Norway
Denomination	Church of Norway
Architecture
Architectural type	Stave church
Completed	c. 1250
Specifications
Capacity	80
Materials	Wood
Norwegian Cultural Heritage Site
Type	Church
Status	Automatically listed
ID	84071

Eidsborg Stave Church (Template:Lang-no) is a stave church in Tokke, Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway.

Eidsborg Stave Church is one of the best preserved Norwegian stave churches. Church is located next to the Vest-Telemark Museum in Eidsborg.

The church is estimated to date to between 1250–1300. It was partly reconstructed in the 19th century. The chorus was demolished in 1826; the new choir dates to the period 1845–50. The reconstruction work did not affect the structure or the shape of the church. It was restored in 1927 when painted figures and ornaments dating from the Renaissance and old murals from the 17th century were revealed.

Dedication

The church is dedicated to the traveller's patron, St. Nicholas of Bari. In the church there was a painted sculpture of St. Nicholas from the middle of the 12th century. According to a legend, every midsummer night she was carried to a nearby pond and immersed there. Today this sculpture is in the collection of the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo. A copy of the sculpture is on display in the stave church.

13th century statue of St. Nicholas of Bari

Construction

The church is a single-nave, rectangular long church. The roof structure is supported by four corner pillars and has no additional supports in the interior. The wall panels are clamped between the corner pillars and supported by additional posts. Around the church there is an arc with small arcs to the north, south and west. The main entrance is on the west. In 1928, the remains of a decorated archivolt were discovered above the entrance, between the pillars. The outer layer of the building forms a wooden shingle facade that clad the walls as well as the roof and the corner pillars.

The church was repeatedly changed through restorations. Nevertheless, the nave is considered to have been preserved in the original. In 1693 the roof turret was rebuilt, and in the 19th century the church was extended to the east. In the 1920s and 1930s, the false ceiling was removed and small windows were inserted. During the restoration, a fireplace was discovered under the floor. This served possibly for burnt offerings of pagan cults. The wood shingle facade dates from the 1970s and shows cracks. Breakage was found on the main structure. Rafter girders were kinked and pushed down by the load. An additional supporting structure was then installed above the rafters and the wooden shingles were replaced.

History

Roof truss of Eidsborg stave church.

When the church was first consecrated, it was a simple small single-nave long church in stavework, of less than 40 square meters. This was probably a common size of village stave churches in Norway in the Middle Ages. The building was 6.3 x 5.3 meters, and the choir was 2.2 meters wide. The first choir was demolished in the 17th century, but there is a sign of it in the building. The roof of the choir was somewhat lower than that of the church. Probably the choir had no more than six square meters of floor space. The church did not have aisles from the start, but roof riders in the middle of the building seem to have been whole from the start.

The church has a construction that for the most part is like other well-known stave churches of this size, but the solutions and work stand out in a somewhat shallow design. There is also very little decoration in the form of elaborate details and sheds on the oldest part of the church.

Such simple stave churches have a construction where bottom sleepers lie on a stone wall and are tied together in the corner by standing corner staves. At the upper end of the corner rods, the rod leg is tapped in. Between the bottom villa and the stave floor are the wall planks that are fastened in quadrants with tongue and groove. The upper corners are reinforced with knees made of angular wax, often taken from the transition between trunk and root. The roof construction is made up of reinforced rafters, cock beams and knees, fastened to the pole. This is how the Eidsborg church is built, but unlike usual, the bottom villas in the Eidsborg church are not lathed over one another in the corner, but only seen next to each other and held together by the corner staff. This is a less stable construction than usual, something that may indicate that there were no ordinary stave church builders in the work team who set up the oldest part of the church. On the bottom villas, there is a clear ax mark after counting, both on the outside and inside. This is also an unusual feature because in other stave churches, all such marks are plastered away so that the walls are smooth, especially on the inside.

There were two entrances to the church, one in the choir and one in the nave, both on the south side of the church. In the bottom villa below the entrance to the church, a double-arch profile has been preserved. Probably there was one like this also on the upper side of the door, and correspondingly at the entrance to the choir. This is a Gothic decorative element that is not known from many churches, but they are dated to around 1250-1300. Double arches can also be found on some small windows on the roof rider. In the roof rider hung two church bells from the Middle Ages. The oldest of them is stylistically dated to 1250–1280, while the other is several decades younger. It is these three things that point to the fact that the church was built sometime between 1250 and 1280.

Gallery

• Old and modern photos
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  Photo from 1880-1890
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  Photo from 1880-1890

• Decorations of the Eidsborg Stave Church
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  West view
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  West portal, 2008
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  Detail of the portal
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  Detailed view of the wooden shingle facade
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  Detail of Eidsborg stave church

• Historical illustrations
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  Elevation and side view of 4 columns from the hallway.
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  Detail of corner post and the roofing.
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  Ground plan, longitudinal section, cross section, elevation of the west façade and north façade, elevation of the south wall of the church.
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  Murals around the church's south entrance.
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  Form of plinth, northwest corner post.
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References

Note: Several sections of this article have been translated from its Norwegian version. For complete detailed references in Norwegian Nynorsk, see the original version at nn:Eidsborg stavkyrkje.

Further reading

• Anker, Leif (2005) Middelalder i tre, Stavkirker in "Kirker i Norge" ISBN 82-91399-16-6
• Morten, Øystein (2008) Stavkyrkja i Eidsborg, Ein Biografi, Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press/Spartacus forlag. ISBN 978-82-304-0037-1
• Hauglid, Roar (1977) Norwegian Stave Churches (Oslo: Dreyers Forlag) ISBN 978-82-09-10602-0
• Valebrokk, Eva; T. Thiis-Evensen; K. Evensen. Ann Clay Zwick (Translator) (1995) Norway's Stave Churches: Architecture, History and Legends (Oslo: J W Cappelens Forlag AS) ISBN 978-82-7683-011-8

External links

• Miljøstatus i Norge: Eidsborg stavkyrkje
• Eidsborg Stave Church at visitnorway.com