Tjøtta Church () is a

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), 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 com ...

of the

Church of Norway The Church of Norway (, , , ) is an Lutheranism, evangelical Lutheran denomination of Protestant Christianity and by far the largest Christian church in Norway. Christianity became the state religion of Norway around 1020, and was established a ...

in Alstahaug Municipality in

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is located in the village of Tjøtta on the island of Tjøtta. It is the main church for the Tjøtta

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

which is part of the Nord-Helgeland prosti (

deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or residence of ...

) in the Diocese of Sør-Hålogaland. The stone church was built in a

rectangular In Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is a rectilinear convex polygon or a quadrilateral with four right angles. It can also be defined as: an equiangular quadrilateral, since equiangular means that all of its angles are equal (360°/4 = 90 ...

style in 1851 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 ...

Christian Heinrich Grosch. The church seats about 310 people.

History

The earliest existing historical records of the church date back to the year 1589, but the church was built before that date. It is speculated that the first church here was constructed on the orders of the local Viking chief Hárek of Tjøtta around the year 1000. Hárek converted to Christianity and was baptized in 999, so building a church would have come next. The church originally had a rectangular

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

with a narrower rectangular or square

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

. In the 1630s and 1640s, major repair work was carried out on the church, and again also in the 1660s and in 1760. In 1811, lightning struck the church causing a fire and some damage to the building which had to be rebuilt. Then again in 1843 there was a massive fire due to another lightning strike, but this one virtually destroyed the whole building, with only small parts of the original structure remaining. After the fire, the building was torn down and a new church was commissioned to be built on the same site. The new building was significantly larger than the previous church.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tjotta Church Alstahaug Churches in Nordland Stone churches in Norway 19th-century Church of Norway church buildings Churches completed in 1851 11th-century establishments in Norway Rectangular churches in Norway

History

See also

References