Scandinavia--Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland--is blessed with five distinct, yet related, cultures.

Learn about the stories behind the legends, about the countries, and most of all about the people.

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"We sailed our ships to any shore that offered the best hope of booty; we feared no fellow on earth..."
Saga of Arrow-Odd

What is Gjetost?
A town in Sweden.
Brown goat cheese.
The word for "hello" in
       Danish.

Roasted fish.
The word for ghost in
       Swedish.

Correct answer?
OSLO - Norway

Clustered around the head of the 68-mile-long Oslofjord, Oslo is probably the most spacious city in the world. Its 175-square-mile metropolitan area consists of over 75 percent forests and five percent water. Its fine deep harbor, Pipervika, stretches into the heart of the city and from it leave ferries to Denmark and Germany.

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Feature: Stavanger
Featured City: Oslo
Food: The Great NordicDiet
          Swedish Semla
          Norwegian Cuisine
          Canned Sardines
History: The Round Tower
Arts:   Vigeland Park, Oslo
          Georg Jensen
People: Henrik Ibsen    
News: Happiest Countries          

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Stave Churches of Norway
by Bob Brooke



With the establishment of Christianity in Norway one thousand years ago, the culture of continental Europe gained a first foothold in the country. The meeting between the new culture and the old gave rise to impulses which made a considerable impression on Norwegian society. Church buildings tell some of the story of this cultural convergence.

Although none of the 29 stave churches that now survive belongs to the first generation of Norwegian churches, historians now know that those built in the 11th century–during the early period of conversion to Christianity–were closely related to the stave churches. People built the earliest ones of wood with walls of upright posts and planks. However, they embedded the posts in holes in the ground. This gave them sufficient stability to function as the constructive frame-work of the building, but it also caused their bases to rot. Traces of this first generation of Norwegian churches can still be seen in the form of rows of deep post-holes at archaeological sites, and decayed remains of wood at the bottom of the post-holes clearly reveal the fate of these early constructions.

Apparently, the first generation churches didn’t stand for more than about 100 years. In the 12th century, the need for more solid constructions became obvious. The problem was solved by introducing sills, upon which the planks and staves rested, thus raising the walls above ground level and protecting them against rot. The method proved so effective that churches built in the 12th century are still standing today.

It’s this method of construction that has given the stave churches their name. A stave wall consists of vertical planks with their bases in a groove in the sill-beam, and their tops in a groove in the wall-plate. At each corner is an upright post connected to the sill below and the wall-plate above. Thus, a stave wall has a solid frame consisting of sill, wall-plate, and two corner posts. This sill is filled with vertical planks. The sills of the four walls form a solid horizontal frame on which the whole church rests. The wall-plates form a corresponding horizontal frame at the top.

Many different types of stave churches have been built but they have one shared feature in that all have stave walls. The most common type is a simple, relatively small building with a nave and a narrow chancel. An even simpler construction is the long church, in which the nave and the chancel form a single, rectangular building of uniform breadth under a pitched roof. In these churches the chancel has been divided off from the nave by an open wall or chancel screen.

The largest and most ornately designed stave church in Norway is Borgund church. This consists of a nave and a narrow chancel, but in addition the chancel has a semicircular extension, or apse, at the east end. However, the distinguishing characteristic of this type is that the central part of the nave is higher than the aisles. The latter must not be confused with the external galleries which surround the entire church. External galleries were common in all types of stave churches, and are, there-fore, not characteristic of any particular type. The higher section of the nave is supported by free-standing posts, spaced about two meters apart and placed approximately one meter inside the outer walls. These separate the aisles from the central nave.

Some of the stave churches have only one free-standing post, placed in the middle of the nave and reaching right up to the roof. These central-mast churches resemble most closely the churches of a simple type with a nave and a narrower chancel, but their system of construction is more complex.

The stave churches are constructions of high quality, richly decorated with carvings. Virtually all of them had door frames decorated from top to bottom with carvings. This tradition of rich ornamentation appears to go back to the animal carvings of the Viking age. The dragons are lovingly executed and transformed into long-limbed creatures of fantasy, here and there entwined with tendrils of vine, with winding stems and serrated leaves. Builders executed these elaborate designs with supreme artistic skill. The stave church doorways are, therefore, among the most distinctive works of art to be found in Norway. However, it’s difficult to connect them with the Christian gospel.

The interiors of the stave churches are dark. The only original sources of light were small, round openings high up under the roof, which shed a meager light on the lofty room. Nevertheless, the wood carvers made some embellishment in the interior. In some of the churches the posts are equipped with capitals, giving associations with the contemporary Romanesque stone churches. The obvious wish was to decorate the stave churches in the same way as the best known stone churches of the day. The basic construction of the stave churches–so intimately linked to the properties of wood–has, however, been preserved intact.

Most of the Norwegian stave churches were small, simple buildings with a short nave and a narrow chancel. The roofing was usually wooden shingles, and both the roof and the walls were tarred. Internally the rooms extended right up to the ridge of the roof. As the churches were small, they could n’t accommodate the growing congregations, particularly after seating was introduced. Most of the stave churches of this type were demolished, or extended and rebuilt.

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Every year about 95 000 people die in Sweden and, according to the law, everyone must be buried. There must be room for everyone in the cemeteries, therefore the future needs of space have to be predicted. Because of this funerals must be part of the planning process.

Read more about Swedish burials

News from Norway
from Aftenposten
News from Denmark
from Denmark.dk
News from Sweden
from the SR International 
News from Finland
from Finnish News Agency STT
News from Iceland
from The Iceland Review
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THE VIKINGS:
THE NORTH ATLANTIC SAGA

In the early Middle Ages, driven by famine at home and the promise of wealth to be had in other lands, the Vikings set out from Scandinavia to conquer parts of England, Ireland, France, Russia, and even Turkey. Bolstered by their successes, the Vikings pushed westward, eventually crossing the North Atlantic and founding settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland in Canada.
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