1026 NORWAY (Sogn og Fjordane) - Urnes Stave Church (UNESCO WHS)

A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church, named so due to its structure of poles and lintels, the load-bearing posts being called stafr in Old Norse and stav in Norwegian. Once common all over northwestern Europe (probably more than 1,300 were only in Norway), until today survived very few, most of them in Norway. Actually, only two medieval stave churches remained outside Norway: one in Sweden (Hedared), and one in Poland (Karpacz - relocated in 1842 from Norway). Of the 28 stave churches in Norway, one was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (in 1979): Urnes Stave Church, probably the oldest of its kind, built around 1130.

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