Post church
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Post church (Norwegian: ''stolpekirke'') is a term for a
church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...
building which predates the
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 ...
es and differ in that the corner posts do not reside on a sill but instead have posts dug into the earth. Posts are the vertical, roof-bearing timbers that were placed in the excavated post holes. Posts were often placed in trenches filled with stone, but were still susceptible to decay.''Pallisade'' (Stavkirke.info)
/ref> This type of construction is often believed to be an intermediate form between a palisade construction and a stave construction. Because the holes for the posts are easily detected in archaeological surveys they can be differentiated from the other two, even if none of the original post churches have survived. There is some debate over whether one stave church, the one at
Røldal Røldal is a village in the municipality of Ullensvang in Vestland county, Norway. The village lies in the Røldal valley along the Storelva river on the north end of the lake Røldalsvatnet. Røldal is located about southeast of the town of ...
in
Hardanger Hardanger is a traditional district in the western part of Norway, dominated by the Hardangerfjord and its inner branches of the Sørfjorden and the Eid Fjord. It consists of the municipalities of Ullensvang, Eidfjord, Ulvik and Kvam, and is ...
,
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 ...
is in fact a post church. During restoration work it was noted that the posts seemed to touch the ground but as the church had sunken into ground it was difficult to verify if it was indeed a post church or a stave church. The only unquestionable indication of the origin of this church is the construction whereby the sill is tapped into the corner post, while in the more common stave church construction of this type the corner post stands on top of the sill.


See also

* Palisade church


References

{{Reflist


External links


Stave Church – Medieval Wooden Churches in Norway
– in Norwegian

– in Norwegian, abstract in English Scandinavia Timber-framed churches