Stave Church Roofs

Stave churches are medieval wooden churches built on a frame of vertical posts (staves). Norway preserves most of the surviving examples: sources count 28 or 29 still standing. Their roofs are among the most striking features, rising in steep, stacked tiers over the nave and aisles.

Roof forms

Two broad structural types are recognised:

• Type A churches have a single space whose roof is carried by trusses of principal rafters combined with crossing "scissor" rafters and braced with brackets.
• Type B churches have a raised central nave with lower aisles around it, so the roof steps down in two or more levels, much like a stone basilica.

In the most elaborate churches, such as Borgund in Lærdal, further tiers of roof, an open gallery (svalgang) roofed around the outside, and a central turret produce a pyramid of steep planes.

Protection from weather

Norway's climate brings cold winters, frost, heavy precipitation and strong winds. The survival of these timber buildings for 800 years or more is credited to design features that kept water away from the structure, such as massive sills beneath the posts, steep roofs that shed rain and snow quickly, and generous overhangs. Exterior timber, including roof coverings of wooden shingles, was traditionally protected with wood tar, which gives many churches their dark colour.

Notable examples

• Urnes, in Luster, Vestland, dates from the first half of the 12th century and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Borgund, in Lærdal, has been dated by dendrochronology to timber felled in 1180-1181.

Relationship to vernacular roofs

Ordinary Norwegian houses of the same period usually had low-pitched roofs of birch bark and turf (torvtak), while churches and other high-status buildings used steeper roofs of boards, shingles or lead. Stave churches therefore show the high-status end of the Norwegian timber roofing tradition.

Conservation

Maintaining stave church roofs involves regular re-tarring, replacement of weathered shingles in kind, and monitoring for rot at joints and eaves.