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Architecturally the stave churches are quite impressive. Made only of wood, some of them have survived for as many as 800 years. Most of the stave churches were built before 1350, when the Black Death ravaged the country, and the first examples did not survive because the timbers of the walls were set directly into the ground, where they quickly rotted. Eventually the corner posts (staves) and wall planks were set on beams or sills of stone above the ground. Their structure of columns, planks, and supports were joined by dovetailing, pegs, and wedges, never by glue or nails. They were therefore completely flexible and could easily expand and contract depending on the weather. From "Norway's Stave Churches" by Eva Valebrokk and Thomas Thiis-Evensen comes this description of a church weathering a storm: "In the Afternoon the Weather changed, and suddenly an entire storm raged outside. It creaked in the old church Walls, as if they were going to fall apart, it was as if each and every plank in the stave construction would slide out of its Placement, break its very framework of Masts and Sills and bury everything beneath the vacillating Columns... but little by little the raging wind blew more fitfully, became constant...although the storm increased rather than declined, soon no sound was to be heard in the Church Walls, wherein the entire Structure had settled and was now steeled and strengthened in the midst of the storm." ____________________________
There were once hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of stave churches across Norway. Between 1650 and 1850 their numbers were reduced from 270 to 60. Then in 1851 a new law in Norway stated that rural churches must have seating for at least three-tenths of the parishioners. Many of these churches did not survive. Even in modern times the churches have taken a beating. Since 1992, 22 churches have been destroyed by arson (most have been rebuilt), including the Holmenkollen Chapel, which the late King Olav V and his family attended, and the Fantoft stave church just outside of Bergen. Almost all the burnings have been attributed to a small but zealous group of Satanist-nationalists and their followers. Today 28 stave churches remain. Some examples of stave churches in Norway include the Borgund stave church in Laerdal in Sogn (see below). It is considered the best preserved of the surviving stave churches and is thought to have been built in the last decades of the 12th century.
Even in the United States there are stave churches. Between 1968 and 1969 a replica of the Borgund stave church in Laerdal, Norway was built in Rapid City, South Dakota. More recently, a replica of the Hopperstad stave church in Vik, Norway was constructed in the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, Minnesota. To read more on stave churches, see "Norway's Stave Churches: Architecture, History and Legends" by Eva Valebrokk and Thomas Thiis-Evensen.
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