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 (stafr in Old Norse, stav in Norwegian) have lent their name to the building technique. Related church types are post churches and churches with palisade walls.
All of the surviving stave churches except one are in Norway, but related church types were once common all over northwestern Europe. The only remaining medieval stave churches outside Norway are one dating to approximately the year 1500 located at Hedared in Sweden and one Norwegian stave church that was relocated in 1842 to the outskirts of Krummhübel, Germany, now Karpacz in the Krkonoše mountains of Poland. One other church, the Anglo-Saxon Greensted Church in England, has many similarities but is not universally regarded as a stave church.
Read more about Stave Church: Construction, History, Architecture and Decoration, Dating of Churches, Later Stave Churches and Replicas
Famous quotes containing the words stave and/or church:
“Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That poor little thing was a good woman, Judge. But she just sort of let life get the upper hand. She was born here and she wanted to be buried here. I promised her on her deathbed she’d have a funeral in a church with flowers. And the sun streamin’ through a pretty window on her coffin. And a hearse with plumes and some hacks. And a preacher to read the Bible. And folks there in church to pray for her soul.”
—Laurence Stallings (1804–1968)