This blog entry is going to be composed mainly of pictures. The above stave church is the second one we visited and is at a small town called Lom. The church doesn't look it in the picture but this is one of the largest stave churches. It was built around the year 1160, and a good deal of early carving and paintwork is preserved in the church, as shown in the photo below. One of the problems of photographing these churches is that the 'guides' to the churches, who are all very knowledgeable, and appear to be doing a full time professional job (to the point that I think a fairer job description might well be 'curator') don't like flash being used inside the churches, quite properly as it does tend to hasten the fading of ancient paintwork, but as these churches are very ill lit, it makes internal photography difficult.
Below is a snapshot of Ann and granddaughter Freja sharing a joke. We were staying at a self catering apartment which Ruth had found, as we did all the time we were in Norway.
The stave churches tend to be in mountainous, inaccessible areas, as I've tried to show in the next two photos.
The below picture shows a small farmhouse in a slightly less bleak area (but not much - still very high and cold). The house has grass growing on the roof, as have a good many of the older buildings in this area. It was used as a form of insulation, and is said to be pretty effective.
Below picture is lower down still, and, as all the 'travelling' photoes were, this was taken through the car window.
I put this one in to illustrate what I meant earlier about the Tolkien feel to the area.
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The above dotted line is to indicate an end to the travelling pictures and to tell you that we've now arrived at the next (and to my mind) the best of churches we visited. It is usually seen as the most archetypal of these churches,
and probably dates from around 1180. It is Borgund Church (pronounced something like 'Borreyund'). It is the best known, and the most photographed of these churches, It has a wooden shingled roof, and is an incredible little carved doll's house of a church. I'll try and tell you more about it in my next.
In the meantime - Goodnight all.
2 comments:
Really looking forward to your next Mike. Borgund, raises the hackles on the nape of my neck... What an astonishing construction... it is like seeing the ghost of a technology and society long since forgot!
Thank you Crowbard. These places were built of wood by a nation that specialised in boatbuilding in order to visit their neighbours (us among others). Their boatbuilding skills were, I think, put to use, and pushed to the extreme when these churches were built.
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