Qualla: Old Sakshaug Church

Old Sakshaug Church: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ukjent fotograf før 1908, Public domain. The chevron carvings on the north gate of Old Sakshaug Church are the kind of detail you do not expect to find at 63 degrees north. Romanesque arches, Gothic choir renovations, a pulpit from 1646 -- this small limestone building on the shores of the Trondheimsfjord packs eight centuries of architectural ambition into a nave that seats two hundred. That it exists at all is remarkable. After a new church was built 500 meters away in 1871, Old Sakshaug was abandoned, stripped of its roof, tower, and woodwork, and left as a shell of stone walls. It took more than eighty years to put it back together.

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Image: Ukjent fotograf før 1908 | Public domain

Old Sakshaug Church: Consecrated by an Archbishop

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orland, CC BY-SA 4.0. The choir, the oldest surviving part of the building, dates to about 1150. The nave followed over the next two decades, and an inscription discovered in the 18th century records that Archbishop Eysteinn Erlendsson consecrated the church in 1184. Erlendsson was one of medieval Nor...

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Image: Orland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Sakshaug Church: Artisans and Electors

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orland, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1646, the Trondelag craftsman Johan Johansen carved the wooden pulpit, which was then painted by Johan Hanssonn -- the same artistic pair responsible for work in several other Norwegian churches of the period. The baroque altarpiece followed in 1692, adding a layer of 17th-cen...

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Image: Orland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Sakshaug Church: Abandoned and Stripped

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orland, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the new Sakshaug Church opened in 1871, the old building's usefulness ended abruptly. The wooden roof, tower, interior fittings, and decorative elements were removed and sold. What remained were the bare limestone walls, open to rain and frost, slowly accumulating moss. Owne...

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Image: Orland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Sakshaug Church: A Slow Resurrection

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Attributed to anonymous medieval builder, Public domain. The restoration stretched across thirty more years after the roof went on, with work continuing through economic depressions, war, and postwar rebuilding. When Old Sakshaug was finally re-consecrated in 1958, it had been out of service for nearly nine decades. The pulpit, the alt...

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Image: Attributed to anonymous medieval builder | Public domain