A wooden church in Norway is still standing after 800 years

Built from timber around 1180, Borgund Stave Church still stands. Here is how.

By Made Over Weekend · 5 min read

In a quiet valley in Lærdal, western Norway, stands a dark wooden church covered in scale-like shingles, with dragon heads on its gables. Borgund Stave Church has stood on the same spot since around 1180, and it is called the best preserved of all Norwegian stave churches.

Nobody wrote down the names of the carpenters who built it. The wood itself tells the date: tree ring dating shows that one of its timbers was cut in the winter of 1180 to 1181, so the church was raised soon after. For nearly 700 years it was the centre of parish life in the valley.

By the 1860s the church had become too small for the parish, so a new church was built nearby. The old one was bought by the National Trust of Norway (Fortidsminneforeningen), which has owned it since 1877. Today it gets more than 50,000 visitors a year.

How it was built

A stave church takes its name from its staves: tall round posts that carry the building. At Borgund, 14 staves stand in the nave. They do not go into the ground. They stand on wooden sill beams, and the sills rest on stone, which keeps the wood out of the wet soil.

Between the staves the carpenters fitted horizontal beams, X shaped crosses and curved braces that form arches around the room. The engineers at the Institution of Civil Engineers point out that some of these elements recall Viking ship building. Outside, the roof steps up in tiers, steep enough to shed heavy snow and rain.

What it teaches a weekend woodworker

Look at the inside photo again and count the triangles. A square frame can rack, leaning over like a pushed box. A triangle can't. That is why every X cross and arched brace at Borgund is there.

You can use the same idea on your next project. If a bench, a table or a shelf wobbles, cut a short piece of wood with 45 degree ends and screw it between a leg and a rail. One brace on each corner and the wobble is gone. Keep the feet off wet ground too, just like the sills on stone.

Pick one small project this weekend, a bench or a plant stand, and give it braces. It may not last 800 years, but it will stand steady for a very long time.