The Stave Church at Fantoft, just outside Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, is a replica of the original built in 1150. The church was moved to its present location in 1883 having been purchased by a private individual with the foresight to preserve a piece of history that the Norwegian Church had declared outdated. The church ordered the destruction of hundreds of these wonderful buildings in the 1800’s. The Fantoft church is a replica because the original was burned-down by a drug crazed Hell’s Angel in 1992.
Replication seemed to be the theme of the few hours I spent contemplating the building, it was there in the intricate woodcarving. It was copied by the flow of tourists who took the same positions, for the same pictures. It continued with the coach parties endlessly traipsing down through the wood to the clearing holding the church, passing through the entrance to be seated in the pews for their allotted potted history and out through the side door, coach bound.
I sneaked in to hear a couple of ‘sermons’ from the female tour guides and crept away, slightly bemused, to a rocky outcrop above the church to think through their words.
Nothing was said about the recent history of the building, how a man with a conscience saved the building from church destruction. Even less was said to explain how the church came to be recently burned, though burned it was ‘and isn’t this just a wonderful testimony to the Norwegian cultural spirit to restore the building exactly as it was’; it wouldn’t do to admit ‘new age Vikings’ in the form of drug crazed motor cyclists, not to tourists.
Much was said about the women and men who used Stave Churches and the role and power of the Lutheran Church after Norway converted from Catholicism in the 1530’s, and this explained something that puzzled me from pictures of the interiors of surviving Stave Churches. The Lutheran church service spanned several hours; men and women seated on opposite sides of the aisle, women along the north wall, men to the south. The sidewalls of the churches were generally painted in reds, ochre’s and greens, the decoration worn away along the south walls where men slumped in sleep, shoulders removing the decoration, while the women sat upright listening to the mumbling of a priest delivering a sermon in latin, an alien tongue to a Norsk-maiden. Still, they maintained their posture, careful not to rub against the wall painting. Another repetition conducted over centuries.
Then, the foulest of repetitions spoken about women, by female tour-guides. An innocent in the congregation asked why the women and men were separated. “We have a saying in Norway that everything evil comes from the North, so that is where the women are seated in God’s house.” I was mildly surprised not to see a lynching but this group of tourists were mostly North American and in their seventies, probably not up to staging a good lynching.
Other female tour guides explained to other groups of tourists how a woman who had just given birth was denied access to the church and until she was ‘deemed to be clean’; if she birthed a male child the cleansing time was ten days, for a female birth the cleansing time was sixty days. Menstruating women were not allowed into church, they had to stand outside the church where a small window allowed them to hear but not see, of course the window was on the north side, where evil comes from.
I still haven’t grasped what all this means, still less can I fathom why visitors found the repetition of these tales amusing. It left me with a chill down my spine only surpassed by my visit to the Lepers Hospital in Bergen, but I’ll leave that for another time.
Replication seemed to be the theme of the few hours I spent contemplating the building, it was there in the intricate woodcarving. It was copied by the flow of tourists who took the same positions, for the same pictures. It continued with the coach parties endlessly traipsing down through the wood to the clearing holding the church, passing through the entrance to be seated in the pews for their allotted potted history and out through the side door, coach bound.
I sneaked in to hear a couple of ‘sermons’ from the female tour guides and crept away, slightly bemused, to a rocky outcrop above the church to think through their words.
Nothing was said about the recent history of the building, how a man with a conscience saved the building from church destruction. Even less was said to explain how the church came to be recently burned, though burned it was ‘and isn’t this just a wonderful testimony to the Norwegian cultural spirit to restore the building exactly as it was’; it wouldn’t do to admit ‘new age Vikings’ in the form of drug crazed motor cyclists, not to tourists.
Much was said about the women and men who used Stave Churches and the role and power of the Lutheran Church after Norway converted from Catholicism in the 1530’s, and this explained something that puzzled me from pictures of the interiors of surviving Stave Churches. The Lutheran church service spanned several hours; men and women seated on opposite sides of the aisle, women along the north wall, men to the south. The sidewalls of the churches were generally painted in reds, ochre’s and greens, the decoration worn away along the south walls where men slumped in sleep, shoulders removing the decoration, while the women sat upright listening to the mumbling of a priest delivering a sermon in latin, an alien tongue to a Norsk-maiden. Still, they maintained their posture, careful not to rub against the wall painting. Another repetition conducted over centuries.
Then, the foulest of repetitions spoken about women, by female tour-guides. An innocent in the congregation asked why the women and men were separated. “We have a saying in Norway that everything evil comes from the North, so that is where the women are seated in God’s house.” I was mildly surprised not to see a lynching but this group of tourists were mostly North American and in their seventies, probably not up to staging a good lynching.
Other female tour guides explained to other groups of tourists how a woman who had just given birth was denied access to the church and until she was ‘deemed to be clean’; if she birthed a male child the cleansing time was ten days, for a female birth the cleansing time was sixty days. Menstruating women were not allowed into church, they had to stand outside the church where a small window allowed them to hear but not see, of course the window was on the north side, where evil comes from.
I still haven’t grasped what all this means, still less can I fathom why visitors found the repetition of these tales amusing. It left me with a chill down my spine only surpassed by my visit to the Lepers Hospital in Bergen, but I’ll leave that for another time.
