The Stave Church Paintings - Medieval Art from Norway

These Norwegian church paintings on wood display a rich brilliance of colour and design and a tenderness of religious feeling that are quite unlike other styles of the Gothic period.

Painting during the Middle Ages in Norway was marked by the clash between foreign influence and native tradition, a clash which reached its crisis in the twelfth century. However, unlike other Northern countries, Norway managed to retain her native traditions and even to renew them. While foreign-influenced stone churches were being built, the wooden stave churches still flourished; the same large-snouted dragon heads which had decorated the prows of Viking longboats appeared also on the new churches, presenting a strange contrast between the new and the old world.