The development of the Christian culture in Norway can be traced in the church buildings. The medieval Christianity was a cultic religion, which required a sancturay where the priest could celebrate mass and the believer could view relics and images of a saint. In the earliest missionary history of Norway masses could be celebrated in tents. In 995 Olav Tryggvason sailed to Moster on the west coast of Norway, and he raised his tents and celebrated mass. Probably, Olav Tryggvasson built a stave church in Moster in 995. Churches were built already in the life-time of Håkon the Good. According to Heimskringla, he built churches on the coast of Møre in 935.

The churches were made of wood, and the supply of wood was good in all parts of Norway. The Norwegian churches were stave churches. It has been widely considered that the construction of stave churches was a unique Norwegian method, but it is not true. Stave churches were also built in Denmark, England, Iceland and Sweden. The church of Tjodhild in Brattalid, the farm of Eirik the Red, in Greenland was also a stave church.

The construction of stave churches is simple and ingenious. Four heavy beams are laid on a foundation of stone. These beams are called sills. These beams are connected at each corner and formed a rectangle. Columns or staves are raised on the corners of the rectangle, and these staves have given name to the construction. The staves are embedded in holes in the sills. The walls are made of vertical beams, and the function of walls are to form a partition wall. However, the partition wall was not a load-carrying wall.

A stave church has several rows of sills. The outermost row of sills forms the outer border of the passage (svalgang) around the church. The middle row of sills is the base course of the staves and planks which parted the church and the corridor (svalgang). The inner row of sills is the base course of the staves of the innermost church room. The room between the inner staves is the nave, and the room on each side of the nave is the adjoining naves. Roofs are constructed over over the nave and the adjoining naves, and this is the reason why there are roofs in different levels. This makes a fantastic and distinctive visual sensation.

It has been considered for a long period of time that the stave churches was an exclusive Norwegian method of construction, because there have not been found sills as the basis of the construction in other places. The staves are embedded in holes in the ground, and, consequently, these posts have had a great possibility to rotten. Archaelogists have found post holes under Romanesque churches, which still are placed on places where old churches have been constructed. However, the oldest Norwegian stave churches are not constructed with sills. In modern Norwegian such a church are called stolpekirke ( en stolpe = a post, en kirke = church). In English such a church is called a post church. There are found remnants of posts, which have been embedded in holes in the ground, under the present Urnes stave church in Sogn. The Urnes stave church is dated from 1130. In other words, an older chuch has been constructed here. There are also found remnants of a post church under the ruins of Mariakirken (kirken = the chuch) in Oslo. The stone church Mariakirken is dated from 1050 in the reign of Harald Hardråde from 1046 to 1066, because some coins have been found in the archaeological site. The English adaption of Hardråde is Hardrada.

The stave churches were decorated with magnificient carvings in capitals and portals (entrances). One of the most famous portals is the portal of the stave church in Urnes in Sogn. The carvings are related to the later Viking art of wood carving. The Urnes portal is older than the church, and, probably, the portal has been a part of the oldest church in Urnes. Non-christian motifs are found in the decoration of some churches. The portal of the Hyllestad churdh in Setesdal is decorated with motifs of the Volsung myth.

There is no clear evidence on the origin of the construction of stave churches. Some think the construction origninally was the style of building og the Norse or North-Germanic santuaries. However, this theory is not proven. Some think the advanced construction of the stave churches must have a long national tradition. Anyhow, it is reasonable to assume that the church builders have been inspired of the Romanesque churches abroad. The similarity is so close that it indicates a direct inspiration. There are churches abroad which are constructed with the style of building of the stave churches, and the ground plan is often the nave and the adjoining naves of the basilica. The pattern of the stone churches is found in the decoraton of the stave churches . There are columns with capitals, there are St. Andrew crosses, round and pointed arcs.

There have been over 750 stave churches in Norway. Many churches have rotted away, other churches have burnt down and many chuches have been teared down and replaced by new churches. There were 95 stave churches left in 1800. Nowadays, there are 28 stave churches. In some cases, furniture of great value was saved from the stave churches which were teared down.

Gol stave church, which is dated from the 13th century, was teared down in 1881, but it was bought by Oscar I and placed in Bygdøy, a peninsula in Oslofjorden. This stave church has a nave and adjoining naves with a semi-circular apsis and 8 columns. It is now part of Norsk Folkmuseum (The Norwegian Musuem of Cultural Heritage) in Bygdøy. Vang stave church in Valdres was bought by Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Preussia and moved to Brückenberg in Schlesien in modern Poland. The artist J. C. Dahl took the initiative in saving Vang stave church. The Nesland stave church, which is dated from the 13th century was teared down in 1847 in spite of the Lutheran minister M. B. Landstad's attempt to save the church. Fantoft stave church in Bergen burnt down in 1992, but it has been reconstructed.

In 2000 the Norwegian state gave a stave church replica to Iceland in occasion of the 1000 years jubilee of the Christinazation of Iceland. The altar was brought by Viking ship to Iceland. The stave church replica was constructed in Vestmannaeyar where Olav Tryggvason constructed the first stave church in Iceland in 1000. The Norwegian TV documentary is titled "Med alter til Island og heimatt med hest." My translation of the Norwegian title into English is "Bringing an altar to Iceland and returning home with a horse".