What “stave” means
A stave church is a wooden church whose frame is built around tall vertical posts, called staves. The staves stand on a foundation of sills or stones, and walls of upright planks are fitted between them. The posts also hold up the roof and, in larger churches, create a central space with a raised roof over a lower surrounding aisle.
The word is a modern description of the construction method. In the Middle Ages these were simply the parish churches of Norway, and the building style spread more widely in northern Europe than the few survivors suggest.
Why timber
Norway had large pine forests, skilled carpenters and a long tradition of shipbuilding and timber houses. Stone building required quarrying, lime and masons, which were expensive and scarce in a thinly populated country. For a small rural community that was newly Christian after the Viking Age, a timber church was the practical choice, even as the continent’s new Romanesque style and, later, Gothic architecture favored stone.
Carpenters used joinery that was closely related to boat building. Wood was often treated with pine tar, which protected it from damp and gave the churches their dark color. Roofs were covered with wooden shingles, often in overlapping layers that look like scales.
Early churches and the building tradition
The first Christian churches in Scandinavia were probably simple, and some early ones had posts set directly in the ground, which rot quickly. Archaeologists have found traces of such earlier buildings beneath some surviving churches. Later builders moved to posts set on a raised foundation, which lasted far longer and is a main reason that some twelfth- and thirteenth-century churches still stand.
The church as an institution mattered here. The spread of the medieval church in the north, with bishops, tithes and a parish network, created the demand for many local churches over a short span of time.
Carvings and dragon heads
Stave churches are known for their decoration. Doorways are often framed with carved plant and animal patterns, and some show interlaced beasts in a style that grows out of Viking Age art. The famous church at Urnes, in western Norway, gave its name to one late style of looping, elegant animal ornament. Some carved scenes appear to draw on legends known from the old religion and on Christian symbols side by side, which reflects a period when two belief systems overlapped. Scholars debate how deliberately these images were meant to be read.
On the outside, the roof ridges and gables of many churches have carved dragon heads. They resemble ship prows, and the usual explanation is that they come from the same artistic tradition, though their exact meaning, perhaps protective, is not certain. The multiple stepped roofs, rising toward a small central tower, are what give the buildings their distinct profile.
How many survive
Historians commonly estimate that many hundreds of stave churches once stood in Norway, but only a few dozen survive in something close to their medieval form, with figures around 28 often quoted. The numbers vary depending on how much rebuilding counts as “original.”
Several things caused the losses. The Black Death reduced the rural population and, in Norway, was followed by a long period of poverty that left many churches neglected. Later, after the Reformation, small old churches were often seen as dark and too small, and growing congregations replaced them with larger log churches. Fire, damp and neglect did the rest. Some survivors were saved by being sold or moved, and in the nineteenth century growing interest in national heritage led to restoration, not all of which was historically careful.
Why they matter to historians
Stave churches show how a society at the edge of Europe adapted a Christian building type using its own materials and craft skills. They also preserve rare examples of medieval wooden carving and painting. Because so little else from medieval Norway survives in timber, they help us imagine what ordinary buildings were like, from farms to halls, which have almost all disappeared.
They also show that medieval architecture was not a single march from Romanesque to Gothic. Different regions solved the same needs in different ways, with local materials and tastes shaping what we now call sacred architecture.