Bråstad Church ( no, Bråstad kirke) is a

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

of the Church of Norway in

Gjøvik Municipality is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Toten. The administrative centre of the municipality is town of Gjøvik. Some of the villages in Gjøvik include Biri, Bybrua, and Hunndalen. The ...

Innlandet Innlandet is a county in Norway. It was created on 1 January 2020 with the merger of the old counties of Oppland and Hedmark (the municipalities of Jevnaker and Lunner were transferred to the neighboring county of Viken on the same date). The ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. It is located in the village of Bråstad. It is the church for the Bråstad

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

which is part of the Toten prosti ( deanery) in the Diocese of Hamar. The brown, wooden church was built in a long church design in 1963 using plans drawn up by the

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Per Nordan. The church seats about 200 people.

History

The earliest existing historical records of the church date back to the year 1365, but the church was not built that year. The first church in Bråstad was a wooden

stave church A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the building's structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing ore-pine posts ar ...

that was likely built during the 13th century. This church was built on a site about to the southeast of the present church site. Historically, the name was spelled ''Brodstadt''. In 1664, the old church was torn down and a new

timber-framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large woode ...

long church was built on the same site. Some of the interior furnishings from the old church were reused in the new church, including the pulpit. In 1694, a new sacristy was constructed on the north side of the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

. In the early 1800s, the parish decided to close down the Bråstad Church and the Old Hunn Church and to replace both of them with a new

Gjøvik Church Gjøvik Church ( no, Gjøvik kirke) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Gjøvik Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the town of Gjøvik. It is the church for the Gjøvik parish which is part of the Toten prosti (d ...

which would be built a short distance away in a new location inside the borders of the growing town. In 1821, the new church opened and soon afterwards, the old Bråstad Church was closed and torn down. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the people of the Bråstad area began pushing for a chapel to be built in their area once again. Land was donated by Sverre Braastad for the purposes of building a chapel and graveyard. The new chapel was designed by architect Per Nordan. The new Bråstad Chapel (as it was originally titled) was consecrated on 29 December 1963 by Bishop Kristian Schjelderup. Today, the building is a parish church so it is now titled as a church rather than a chapel.

References

{{use dmy dates, date=January 2022 Gjøvik Churches in Innlandet Churches in Toten Deanery Long churches in Norway Wooden churches in Norway 20th-century Church of Norway church buildings Churches completed in 1963 1963 establishments in Norway

History

See also

References