Church

Skaun Church

Situated along Gudbrandsdalsleden

Foto: kirken.no

Skaun Church is a beautiful medieval stone church from around 1180. It is located on Venn, surrounded by yellow cornfields and close to the ruins at the historic site Husaby.

Online

www.skaun.kirken.no

Skaun church's 800th anniversary was celebrated in 1982. The church was completed sometime in the early 1180s and was from the beginning a parish church, probably dedicated to St. Olav. In the Middle Ages, the church was called "Vinjar kirkju".

It is probably the stonemasons who worked on the octagon in Nidaros Cathedral who also built Skaun Church. The fact that we find the same stonecutter marks in both places indicates this. It is not inconceivable that Archbishop Eystein (1120-1188) was the force behind the construction of Skaun church. He was a great church builder and he was from Rotvoll farm in Børsa, the neighboring village down by the fjord. It is he who is considered the author of the book Passio Olavi - the stories about all the miracles that happened at Olavi's grave in Nidaros.

The most distinctive thing about Skaun church can be found inside the church room. In front of the altar table is a picture or rather a series of pictures. It is Mary who is depicted. We call such pictorial representations in front of the altar table altar frontal or antemensal and this was long sometime in the 13th century. In the middle we see Mary as Queen of Heaven with Jesus on her lap. In the picture at the top left, Mary meets the angel Gabriel, that is the Annunciation. Next to it in the same picture we see the meeting between Maria and Elisabeth, mother of John the Baptist. At the top right is from the stable, from the birth of Jesus, Mary nursing the newborn child and a woman bringing maternity porridge. Down to the left, almost blurred, there we see the shepherds who hear about the child who was born nearby. The last picture is from the temple in Jerusalem eight days after the birth and the meeting with Simeon. Here we have the entire Christmas Gospel in pictures. We have 31 such antemensals preserved in Norway, but only a few of them have Mary as a motif.