Hotel Schweizer Hof
# 14
"Stave Church"

Church

Masts or stave churches are churches in wood construction, which in Scandinavia during the transition time from the pagan religion to Christianity in the 12th and 13 Century were built. The most important feature is the so-called Stabbau, with walls made of vertical "rods" are formed. This is an important difference to the block construction, the horizontal bar, the walls are formed.

The type of stave church was founded at the beginning of the 11th Century, when Christianity in Scandinavia after a two-hundred-year transitional period had finally taken root. The impetus of the mission came from England and Germany, where especially Ansgar (796-865), by the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, gave impetus. Driven by the missionary was the Norwegian king Haakon I. (920-961), Olav I. (963-1000) and later saint Olav II (995-1030) who are trained in England and were baptized. The spread of the Christian faith also served on the submission of competing small Scandinavian kings.

The first stave churches were simple buildings with entrenched poles caused by the contact with the ground very quickly rotten, while the Außenbeschalung by weathered frequent rainfall. Over the next two hundred years, we therefore developed a new type with a stone base and a beam frame, as a condition on the poles of the inner Grundbaus served. With a onion-like structure with an exterior wall, the bearing of the inner mast was moved, and through an outer porch was this new construction to resist moisture better. The so-constructed buildings, therefore, have survived the centuries.