ikea furniture and home accessories: [New post] The Chapel in the Hills

Respond to this post by replying above this line

The Chapel in the Hills

by James Stewart

While we were in South Dakota for the Stewart Family Reunion I couldn't resist visiting this recreation of an actual Viking style church from an original made in 1150ad in Norway after they started converting to Christianity. It's called a "stave" church because it uses vertical staves or columns for the basic building block and is early timber framing.

A local American radio preacher and his wife came up with the idea to celebrate Christianity and the impact of Norwegian settlers to the South Dakota area and this church was created exactly as the previous one in Norway that still stands. The church was erected in 1969. They even had help from the Norwegian government who gave them exact drawings and Norwegian craftsmen did many of the carvings. But everything else was done with American descendants.

They restored an original American log cabin made by a Norwegian Immigrant in the late 1800's in South Dakota and moved the cabin to the site of the church to celebrate early Norwegian settlers. It now serves as a museum.

The cabin was a mini-museum of frontier life of Norwegian settlers to the Americas. Notice all the wood products in the cabin. I saw a cupboard made in 1802 probably from Norway originally.

The site has a traditional Norwegian style barn made to match existing barns in Norway with sod roofs.

There was also a bell tower and a peace / prayer walk.

But the highlight of the site was the church. It's made entirely of Oregon Douglas Fir which is the closest American Tree to the Norwegian conifers that would have been used in the original 1150ad church.

There are virtually no nails or metal fasteners except the door hardware which was blacksmith wrought. All joints are properly mortice and tenon, timber frame style with wooden pegs to hold everything in place.

The details are amazing. Everything has symbolism from the number of arches to the St Andrews style cross bracing to evoke religious symbolism.

Three arches representing teh trinity and St Andrews crosses to add stability while also reminding us of a famous martyr

Even though it looks very Viking it's not pagan. The early Christian prophets knew they needed to support the local traditions into their new religion so the snakes and serpents of the Viking tradition were representative of the Devil but winged Dragons were representative of good. Roosters remind us that Peter denied Jesus three times before teh cock crowed etc.....cEvery detail and cutout was an exact replica of teh 1150ad Chapel in Norway.