Old Gildeskål Church: A Medieval Parish Church in Norway

Site at a Glance

Rating

★4.4

Popularity

Very Low

Country

Norway

Primary era

Medieval

External website

Open ↗

Eras represented

Medieval, Early Modern

Civilizations

Norwegian

Site type

Religious

Remains

Church

History

Medieval origins

Old Gildeskål Church is a historic parish church in Norway, located just north of Inndyr. It was founded in the twelfth century and was probably built around 1130, possibly under King Øystein, a medieval Norwegian monarch. Originally a Catholic church, it later became an Evangelical Lutheran church under the Church of Norway. The earliest surviving historical records that mention the church date from 1432.

For centuries, the church served Gildeskål Parish as its main parish church. The parish belongs to Bodø Deanery, an administrative subdivision within the Diocese of Sør-Hålogaland, a major district of a Christian church.

Fire, repair, and civic use

A major fire around 1710 led to repairs and an enlargement of the building. The blaze destroyed the church’s interior furnishings and decoration. The pulpit was later painted by Gottfried Ezekiel, an artist who worked in northern Norway from 1751 and also painted the altarpiece for the new Gildeskål Church.

In 1814, Old Gildeskål Church served as an election church and polling station. Parish electors were chosen there as part of the electoral process that led to the Norwegian Constituent Assembly, which drafted Norway’s constitution.

Replacement as parish church

A law passed in 1851 required rural churches to accommodate at least 30 percent of their parish members. Old Gildeskål Church could seat about 275 people, so a larger church was built on the same property, approximately 100 metres to the west. The new Gildeskål Church was completed in 1881. After that, the old church closed as a parish church and became a museum. It is preserved and automatically protected as a Norwegian cultural heritage site.

Remains

Building and layout

Old Gildeskål Church is a white stone long church, a building arranged along a longitudinal axis, with seating for approximately 275 people. Its medieval plan consisted of a rectangular nave, the principal space for the congregation, and a narrower, almost square chancel, the section traditionally associated with the altar and clergy. The chancel had a lower roofline than the nave.

The east and west gable walls and the south wall were rebuilt at an unspecified date. The enlargement carried out after the fire extended the church on the south side and gave it a half-cruciform plan. The replacement church stands on the same property, about 100 metres west of the old building.

Pulpit and surviving interior

The pulpit is decorated with paintings by Gottfried Ezekiel. These paintings form part of the church’s surviving interior after the fire around 1710, which destroyed its earlier furnishings and decoration.