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Fantoft stave church
Fantoft stave church (Svein Nord).
When a new church was to be built at Fortun in Sogn in 1883, the old stave church was in danger of being demolished. During the years after J.C.Dahl took the initiative to the foundation: Foreningen til Norske Fortidsminners Bevaring (The Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments) in 1844, interest for these monumental church buildings from the Middle Ages had grown so strong that this church was moved and re-erected at Fantoft outside Bergen.

Here the church was one of the great attractions for more than a hundred years. On June 6 1992, the catastrophe struck; the church burned to the ground. It became a popular demand that the church be rebuilt the way it had stood at Fantoft, a true copy, a rare antiquarian reconstruction project.

Originally, the church at Fortun must have been built in the second half of the 1100s. The nave was then a little longer than the one that burned down in 1992. The latter had five pairs of staves in the central space as compared with the previous seven. In the 1600s a steeple was added in the west, and, the old stave-built chancel was replaced by a timbered chancel. This is how the church appeared until it was moved in 1883. When the church was to be re-erected at Fantoft, there seemed to be indications that the nave had been lengthened in the Middle Ages by two extra pairs of staves, and that material from the oldest chancel had been used for this. In 1883 the nave was shortened to the original five pairs of central staves. The pairs of staves that were left over were used for reconstruction of the stave-build chancel. It was decided to stick to this style when the church was re-erected for the second time; as was the church exterior, with gallery, wooden roof shingles, chancel steeple and a ridge turret above the nave, which are reconstructed on the pattern of Borgund stave church.