Staves on a stone sill
The direct reason it survived when others did not.
W. Bulach — CC BY-SA 4.0 · mendhak — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0
Twenty-eight of perhaps a thousand. Borgund is the best preserved and the most original. Heddal is the largest and still a working church. Urnes is the oldest and the only one inscribed on the UNESCO list on its own, near the Sognefjord. Gol was moved to the folk museum in Oslo and is the easy option for anyone not leaving the capital. If you are in western Norway, Borgund and Urnes are in roughly the same area.
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Borgund dates from about 1180 and is the best-preserved of Norway's stave churches: one of twenty-eight surviving from perhaps a thousand that once covered the country, and the only one to reach us without substantial alteration. The method of building is the subject. Stavkirke means literally a church of staves: a frame of massive vertical timber posts set on a stone sill rather than into the soil — which is precisely why it survived while its sisters rotted. The planks are jointed rather than nailed, and the timber is resin-rich pine, carefully felled and then treated with tar over centuries. The ornament tells a story of transition: Christian crosses at the apex, but on the roof gables carved dragon heads exactly like the prows of Viking ships. On the walls are runic inscriptions left by medieval visitors. The church stands on the road between the fjords and Oslo, and has a visitor centre explaining its construction with a cutaway model.
The direct reason it survived when others did not.
Left on the walls by medieval visitors.
Vindhellavegen 606, 6888 Borgund, Lærdal