Stave Church Architecture

A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common across northwestern Europe, named for its post and lintel construction, a form of timber framing in which the load-bearing pine posts were called stafr in Old Norse and stav in modern Norwegian. The vast majority of surviving examples stand in Norway; beyond Scandinavia only two genuine medieval stave churches remain, the Hedared Stave Church in Sweden, built around 1500, and the Vang Stave Church, originally built in Norway and relocated in 1842 to Karpacz in Poland's Karkonosze mountains. Early estimates put the number built in Norway at around a thousand, though recent research suggests the true figure may be closer to two thousand; only twenty nine stave churches remain standing in Norway today, twenty eight of them classified as historical structures, most built between 1150 and 1350. Two principal architectural types developed: Type A, single-nave churches without free-standing internal posts, and Type B, churches with raised roofs supported by internal post systems.