Gol's 13th century stave church.

[Madhatter]

Went out to vigeland park today and up to the cultural museum to get a look at gol's stave church. Its spectacular in person, has this feel and smell of aged timber, everything is smooth from years of use and the inside is strangely cool. Cant imagine what this place looked like lit with torches and candles.

As before, no editing, just a quick resize in paint (which compresses and adds noise to the image, im sorry) and thats it, so if something looks slightly off or you want a high res copy, it will have to wait till next month till I can pull the raws

Entrance gate.



Back when the church was still under the collection of the king, this gate used to provide access to the collection and the church. Was largely made redundant in the early 1900's when the cultural society took over control of the church and incorporated the kings collection into their own.

Front entrance to the church.



Main entrance to the church, note the christian crosses and norse dragon heads on the arch ways. Even though they had been converted to christianity, they were still very superstitious in the 13th century and kept their norse gods just to be safe. Yes, this church was originally built in the 1200's.

Carved arches.



Carved arches line the walk ways surrounding the church. At first I thought the black coating was ash, but it is apparently dried remains of the sap from the timbers. Quite intricate detail, all hand carved of course.

Narrow walk ways.



Narrow walk ways line the church and connect the entances together without actually needing to venture outside of the church. The back half could be used as shelter or storage from the weather as it is totally enclosed.

Altar.



The altar and centre of the church. Quite stunning, it also contained the only unnatural light in the whole church. Originally it would have been lit by torch or candle light, it makes the detail on the hand painted reliefs even more stunning when you consider what they had to work with.

Vaulted ceiling.



Amazing. All the arches and levels of the church overlap in the vaulted ceiling and create a stunning effect. Not one single timber was left unpainted (scroll work) or uncarved, the time it must have taken to build the church would be staggering. As I said before, no natural light in the main part of the church at all, so this photo was taken with long exposure, available ambient light filtering through doorways and with a whole lot of prayer :bigthumb:

Back outside again.



The detail in the roof and the main truss carvings for each of the segments was unbelievable. Yes, its not square to each corner, but I think you would have trouble recreating the detail with todays technology, let alone carving it and errecting it by hand.

Ive got plenty more of the church, but these are just the few I grabbed from the card, ill put up a big thread when I get back to aus.

[disci]

I like numbers 4 and 5 Madhatter. Thanks for sharing.

Regards

Des

[BuD]

what a awesome looking place. i saw your base was brisbane and at first i thought that was somewhere here lol

such a nice place for portrait pics

[brayway]

Very nice building and images! i also saw where you where, and was thinking where it could be here. Then i read the last line haha. Also love how you put a bit of a description on every image, Very interesting read!