900 year-old Borgund Stave Church in Norway

Borgund Stave Church (Nynorsk: Borgund stavkyrkje, Bokmål: Borgund stavkirke) is a fight church placed in the town of Borgund in the district of Lærdal in Sogn og Fjordane region, Norway. It is delegated a triple nave fight church of the alleged Sogn-sort. This is likewise the best saved of Norway's 28 surviving fight holy places. The congregation is piece of the Borgund ward in the Indre Sogn deanery in the Diocese of Bjørgvin, despite the fact that it is no more utilized customarily for chapel capacities, it is presently utilized as a storehouse and it is controlled by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Norwegian Monuments. 

Borgund Stave Church was fabricated at some point somewhere around 1180 and 1250 AD with later increments and reclamations. Its dividers are framed by vertical wooden sheets, or fights, thus the name "fight church". The four corner presents were joined on each other by ground ledges, resting on a stone foundation. whatever is left of the fights then climb from the beginning, each one fight indented and notched along the sides with the goal that they bolt into each other, structuring a solid wall. 

Borgund is based on a basilica plan, with diminished side paths, with an included chancel and apse. It has a raised focal nave separated on four sides by an arcade. A wandering circles this stage and into the chancel and apse, both included the fourteenth century. An extra walking, as a patio, circles the outer surface of the building, protected under the overhanging shingled top. The floor arrangement of this congregation takes after that of a focal arrangement, twofold shelled Greek cross with an apse connected to one end set up of the fourth arm. The passages to the congregation are in the three arms of the practically cross. 

The roof is held up with "scissor shafts" or two steeply calculated backings crossing one another to structure a X shape with a restricted top compass and a more extensive bottom compass. The lower closures of the X shape are joined by a bottom truss to keep the X from crumpling. On account of Borgund, an extra shaft cuts over the X beneath the intersection point yet over the lowest part truss, for additional soundness. This balances out the steeply pitched top, comprising of flat sheets secured in shingles. Initially, the top would have been secured on the outside with sheets running longwise, in the same way as the structure of the top underneath it, however in later years wooden shingles got to be more common. Scissor shaft top development is commonplace of most fight churches. 

Propping as cross-molded trusses additionally shows up on the dividers of the building itself, inclining bars running up the dividers from the carpet to about level with the highest point of the arcade. Further intersection, this time in a more elaborate sense shows up in the cross formed carvings with emblems in the middle, normally named "Holy person Andrew's crosses" which run along the territory over the arcade, in the visual "second story" that is not really an exhibition however is placed where one is ordinarily placed in extensive stone temples somewhere else in Europe at this point. Close to these littler crosses are the pincer bars, running between the sections to help further wedge everything immovably together. The most critical supporting components are the cut supports that are upheld by knee joints and bend upward from the external divider to the highest point of the arcade as these assistance to backing the outward push on the fight walls. 

Borgund has layered, overhanging tops, finished with a tower. On the peaks of the top, there are four cut winged serpent heads, swooping from the cut top edge crests, reviewing the cut monster heads found on the fronts of Norse boats. Comparable peak heads additionally show up on little bronze house formed reliquaries regular in Norway in this period. Borgund's present mythical serpent heads perhaps date from the eighteenth century, however unique monster heads staying on prior structures, for example, Lom fight church and adjacent Urnes fight church, the most seasoned still surviving fight church, likewise in the Sogn region, recommend that there likely would have been comparative winged serpent heads there at one time. Borgund is one of the main temples to still have protected its edge peaks, cut with openwork vine and vegetal rehashing designs. The monsters on top of the congregation were regularly utilized as a type of seepage. 

Inside 

The majority of the inward fittings have been uprooted. Separated from the column of seats that are introduced along the divider inside the congregation in the mobile outside of the arcade and raised stage, a soapstone text style, a sacred place (with seventeenth century altarpiece), a sixteenth century platform, and a sixteenth century organizer for putting away sacrificial table vessels there is little else in the building. After the Reformation, when the congregation was changed over for Protestant love, seats, a platform and other standard church decorations were incorporated, however these have been uprooted since the building has gone under the insurance of the Fortidsminneforeningen (The Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments). There would have been more fine art in the building, no doubt as statues and crosses, as stay in a couple of different chapels, however these are currently lost.