Category: Church

Heddal Stave Kirke, Notodden

9/6/2014

The wedding couple's getaway vehicle

On Saturday I was feeling a bit stir crazy and wanted something to do. Bø is a great town, but it is small. Very small.
I had seen that there was a Stave church in a neighboring town. My new friend, Vebjørn, was kind enough to drive Hannah and I to Notodden to check it out.
I keep assuming everyone knows who Hannah is at this point, if you don't, let me explain that she is another student studying here from PLU. She is the best.
OK, continuing the story, we all decided to go. It was not until about 20 minutes on the windy Norwegian roads that I remembered that I get car sick. It was awful. We only had to pull over to breath a couple of times but we made it there mess free! When we arrived there was a wedding just finishing up at the Stave church. It was kind of cool to see people in bunad, celebrating and such, but I mostly wanted to get peruse the church up close. To pass the time we explored the graveyard surrounding the church. There some interesting headstones and long of cool names (cool in contrast to the ones in America). Cemeteries here are so much different that in the States. There is something that feels much more personal here. Perhaps its not have roads that drive through the center of them? Any who, eventually the wedding party cleared and we got to go inside and check out the church. This was not my first time to a Stave church so it was not completely new, but nonetheless is was still beautiful. I love all the intricate carvings and the strong smell of wood. When we were done at the church we started heading back. We stopped by a shop that had a bunch of, what I would consider to be, classic Norwegian furniture was rosemaling. The colors and shapes were neat. I'd like to have a few pieces like this in my home one day, but I am not about to try and ship a kitchen hutch to Tacoma anytime soon. Finally the three of us headed home and made an awesome dinner. I do eat food here, but it is not often what one may define as a meal. So grilling tons of veggies, cooking up beans (which is a staple I haven't had since being here) and eating our American-Mexican meal was the best. Got to see the Hobbit 2 and relax. I posted a slideshow of pictures below for you to scroll through.

Hannah's rejoicing for our meal. I love making meals with people.

Hannah, myself, and Vebjørn outside the Stave church.

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Class trip to Bø Gamle Kirke

9/4/2014

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For class time on Sept. 4 my Norw & Telemark Regional Identity class hiked up to the Bø Gamle Kirke (old church). It was really cool. The church dates back to 1100, and we found out that it is older than most of the Stave churches that are left in Norway. Apparently wealthier areas We learned a lot about the history of Nordic religion/Christianity/Catholicism/The Reformation and how they affected the interior of the church. There was a lot of info, so here are some of the things I found the most interesting:

The pews in the church were only added after The Reformation because now the word of God was being shared and heard for long periods of time, and of course after 3 hours at a service people wanted to sit down;
Back in the day the church used to bury their dead directly underneath the church, as in under the floorboards;
Wealthier districts, like Bø, had churches made out of stone, where poorer districts had to build churches from wood (aka Stave churches);
One of the Nordic beliefs that was held onto in the construction of the churches was that evil came from the north, but good/God came from the south. Because of this they only put windows on the south side of the church;
For a very long time at this church, and in some places in Norway up until the 1940's, the women sat on the left side of the church and the men on the right. The left side of the church is also the North side. Is this saying something about the perception that women are evil? I'll leave that up to you to decide;
After the Black Plague the population of Norway went down by 2/3. It took 300 years for the population to build up again, but when it did they couldn't fit everyone in the church so they had to build another one to house them all. This church sits just next to the old one; and
On the ends of the pews are family names. These were the names of the farms/farm families. The wealthiest farmers' names are the ones closest to the front.

The artwork and carvings throughout the church are really cool to see. Some of the paintings date back to the 14th century.