Vang Stave Church: A Medieval Norwegian Church in Karpacz, Poland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Prussia, Norwegian
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page14 sections
History
Medieval Norwegian origins
Vang stave church is a medieval Norwegian timber church in Karpacz, Poland, built in the Norwegian stave-church tradition probably around 1200. A stave church is a medieval timber church whose framework is formed by upright wooden posts joined to horizontal structural members. The building originally stood in the parish of Vang in the Valdres region, beside Lake Vang in the center of the village.
It served as a Catholic church during the Middle Ages and became a Lutheran parish church of the Church of Norway after the Reformation. The church remained beside the lake from approximately the third quarter of the twelfth century until 1841. A tradition holds that it first stood at another site near Vang before being moved and altered. The shortened appearance of some posts supports the possibility of an earlier relocation and rebuilding, although the date of that phase is uncertain and could belong to any period from the Middle Ages to as late as 1600.
Replacement and threatened demolition
A larger church built of horizontal logs was later erected beside the stave church. The older building continued to serve for worship until the new church was consecrated on 9 April 1840. Its outside gallery was demolished in 1839 to make room for the replacement.
Local authorities decided in 1832 that the stave church should be demolished because it was too small and structurally unsafe. Plans for a replacement were already known by 1826. The painter Johan Christian Dahl unsuccessfully proposed repairing and enlarging the building and also tried to secure its preservation as a chapel or museum church. A proposal to move it to Heensåsen as an annex church was rejected.
Removal from Vang and rebuilding in Silesia
Dahl bought the church at a public auction in January 1841 for 86 speciedaler, 1 ort, and 7 skilling. The sale required the site to be cleared before the end of that year. Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later King Frederick William IV, then assumed responsibility for the church and its re-erection.
Franz Wilhelm Schiertz surveyed the building, marked its parts, supervised its dismantling, and prepared the components for transport. They were shipped from Lærdalsøyri through Stettin to Berlin and stored over the winter in the courtyard of the Altes Museum. The original plan to rebuild the church on Pfaueninsel near Potsdam was abandoned.
At the suggestion of Countess Friederike von Reden, the church was moved in spring 1842 to Brückenberg, now Karpacz Górny, in the Karkonosze mountains of Silesia. Count Christian Leopold von Schaffgotsch donated the new site, which lies at approximately 885 metres above sea level below Sněžka. Frederick William IV laid the foundation stone on 2 August 1842. Reconstruction took two years, and the church was consecrated in late July 1844 in the presence of members of the Prussian and Dutch royal families. It received the dedication “The Mountain Church of Our Savior of Vang.”
Congregations and churchyard
After Countess von Reden died in 1856, a commemorative monument with an alabaster portrait relief was erected on the mountainside beside the church. A separate granite bell tower was also designed by Friedrich August Stüler.
The church served a German congregation until summer 1946. Following the expulsion of the German population, a small Polish Evangelical Lutheran congregation was established in 1946 and continues to use the church for services, weddings, baptisms, and concerts. German-language services are held on Sundays and public holidays from May through September.
The churchyard was established on 9 August 1844 and served the Brückenberg congregation for more than a century. Its graves include those of pastor Erich Gebhardt, mayor Hermann Breiter, the last German pastor Ernst Passauer, and conductor Rudolf Jonas. Passauer was shot during a robbery at the parsonage on 9 February 1946. Regular cemetery use ended after 1946, although urn burials for congregation members were permitted again from 2001. Later burials included the Polish pantomime artist and theatre director Henryk Tomaszewski in 2001 and the writer Tadeusz Różewicz in 2008.
Vang is a parish church of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, the Lutheran tradition defined by the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and is administered within the Wrocław diocese. Its partner church is the Gustav-Adolf stave church at Hahnenklee-Bockswiese, consecrated in 1908 as a free imitation of Borgund stave church.
Remains
Wooden church and internal structure
The church is made of Norwegian pine and consists entirely of wooden structural elements. Its load-bearing framework uses no iron nails, and the building reaches 15.50 metres in height including the flagpole. The single nave is 9 metres long and 7.50 metres wide, bounded by four corner posts. Four free-standing posts support a recessed, flat ceiling. Unlike the arrangement in many other stave churches, these supports end within the room rather than rising to the gabled roof, which rests on the side walls.
Nave and choir
An organ gallery spans the space between the western interior posts and the western nave wall, 2.20 metres above the floor. Round-headed windows fitted with bullseye glass light the interior from the surrounding gallery. The choir measures 3.80 by 5.10 metres and is bounded by four corner posts. Two additional supports at the junction of the choir and nave form, together with the western corner posts, a three-arched opening. The east end terminates in a semicircular apse.
Gallery and roofs
An external gallery approximately 80 centimetres wide surrounds the church. It is interrupted on the north by a sacristy measuring about 2.30 by 1.85 metres. Added in 1844, the gallery has round-headed windows with bullseye glass and lamps. Its route runs from the north portal to the sacristy, around the apse, along the south side, and back toward the west portal.
The four-tiered roof gives the church a pagoda-like form. A lean-to roof covers the gallery, while the nave and choir have gabled roofs. The apse carries a copper dome with five tall rounded windows and a lantern topped by a cross. This arrangement is unusual for a stave church and more closely resembles Baroque design. The nave roof turret has two levels and ends in a gabled roof followed by a pyramidal roof, with dragon heads and a flagpole. A carved ridge ornament runs along the nave and choir roofs and ends in dragon heads at the gables. Crosses crown the north and south portal roofs, while dragon heads crown the west portal roof.
Lean-to and gabled projections over the west, north, and south portals give the building a cruciform ground plan. Each gable contains five tall, narrow windows, another arrangement considered unusual among stave churches.
Carved posts and portals
Post capitals
Capitals survive on the four principal posts, the four nave corner posts, the four eastern choir-wall corner posts, and the choir-side supports. The carvings on the principal posts probably date from the seventeenth century and are later than the portal carvings. The two eastern posts have smooth upper edges, while the western posts have braided or twisted edges.
The northeast capital shows a club-wielding man fighting a lion, alongside a horned ox or bull facing a wolf-like animal. The scene may recall Samson or David, although the identification remains uncertain. The original eastern part of the northwest capital depicts a dragon-like creature fighting a large predator while a small dog attacks it; another predator carries a dog in its mouth. The reconstructed western part adds more animal combats, including a wolf and a winged creature biting a predator.
The southeast capital contains interlacing loops emerging from masks and spreading across the stone-like wooden surface, resembling the breath of Odin. On the southwest capital, intertwined vines have leaves that bite one another like the heads of lindworms. Together with the dragons, masks, animal combats, and protective lions, these motifs were understood as apotropaic decoration, imagery intended to ward off evil or supernatural danger.
Reused Vang portals
Three old portals from Vang were reused during reconstruction, but their positions were exchanged and their carved faces turned inward. The former south portal became the north portal, while the former west portal became the south portal. The carvings consequently face the interior rather than the outside.
The south portal, formerly the west portal, belongs to a modified Sogn-Valdres style, a regional Norwegian tradition associated with Sogn and Valdres and known here for carved portals, animal motifs, and interlaced ornament. Its half-columns carry mask figures blowing air from their mouths, probably representations of Odin. The clover-shaped arch above the doorway contains interlaced dragons, and the triangular panel above it has a leaded bullseye window. Additional framing columns, a replacement door, and decorative iron fittings were added.
The north portal, formerly the south portal, also follows the Sogn-Valdres tradition. Its half-columns have mask motifs and cylindrical capitals. Above them are a horseshoe-shaped arch with a bullseye window, floral carving, and two interlocking dragons. The replacement door has iron fittings, and the portal has new framing columns.
The west portal, formerly the southern choir portal, has plain half-columns and protective lions on its capitals. A straight lintel surmounts a “chain of animals” composition made entirely from animal motifs. The portal at the main entrance was newly carved and is framed by two principal columns with protective lions on their capitals. Those lions were stolen in 1995, recovered at Sotheby’s in Cologne in 1999, and returned the same year.
Jacob of Jannowitz restored parts of the portal carvings after they had been damaged. Their original apotropaic purpose was probably to deter supernatural beings from entering through the doorways. A runic inscription classified as N 83 is carved on a church doorway. Magnus Olsen proposed reading it as “Eindridi the dexterous carved the doorway, the son of Olav of Lo.” The inscription was already badly damaged and difficult to read in 1937, and the interpretation depends on copies made before the relocation.
Reconstruction and furnishings
Most of the original building material was discarded during the nineteenth-century reconstruction. The surviving original elements include the main structural members, namely sills, posts, and wall plates, together with the carved doorframes. The outside gallery and all wall planks were newly made. The apse, gallery, roof turret, windows, and roof trusses were reconstructed or renewed, while the decorated ceiling above the choir was not restored.
The organ stands on the gallery. It has six stops and is played from one manual, and was built by the Schmiedeberg organ builder Schinke. The present baptismal font is a Lower Silesian Baroque work dating from approximately 1740. It came from the demolished church at Dittmannsdorf. An earlier description mentioned a baptismal stone of polished Kunzendorf marble made by the Cantian workshop in Berlin.
Paintings in the choir depict Christ enthroned, the coronation of Mary, the washing of the feet, Christ in Herod’s palace, the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion. Beside the church stands a modern woodcut sculpture of the resurrected Lazarus, donated on 28 July 1994 by the Silesian Order of St John, the Association of Evangelical Silesians, and the von Kassel family.
Bell tower and memorial features
The separate granite bell tower is connected to the wooden church by a covered gallery hall. Built of rough granite, it was intended to protect the church from strong mountain winds. The tower is 18.6 metres high and has a square plan measuring 3.76 metres on each side. Its gabled roof carries two dragon heads and a small roof turret.
Each side of the tower has a clock face weighing more than 300 kilograms. The clocks came from the Neusalz iron foundry, while the mechanism was made by the Hirschberg clockmaker Scheer. Three bells cast by Christian Ludwig Pühler’s Gnadenberg foundry hang in the tower and roof turret. They weigh 350, 175, and 75 kilograms. The two larger bells hang in the tower, and the smallest is in the roof turret. Their inscriptions are “Praise of Christ,” accompanied by verses from Psalm 103, “Our Father,” with the full Lord’s Prayer, and “Lamb of God,” with the text of John 1:29. The king donated the bells and personally selected their inscriptions.
The churchyard retains numerous German gravestones. A memorial to Countess von Reden stands beside the church, while a commemorative plaque marks the former Vang site in Norway.
