Stave Church

A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the buildings' structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing ore-pine posts are called stafr in Old Norse (stav in modern Norwegian). Two related church building types also named for their structural elements, the post church and palisade church, are often also called 'stave churches'.

Originally much more widespread, most of the surviving stave churches are in Norway. The only remaining medieval stave churches outside Norway are those of circa 1500 at Hedared in Sweden and one Norwegian stave church relocated in 1842 to the outskirts of Krummhübel, Germany, now Karpacz in the Karkonosze mountains of Poland. (One other church, the Anglo-Saxon Greensted Church in England, exhibits many similarities with a stave church but is generally considered a palisade church.)

Archaeological excavations have shown that stave churches, best represented today by the Borgund stave church, are descended from palisade constructions and from later churches with earth-bound posts.

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