Atrå Church

Atrå Church (Atrå kyrkje) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is located in the village of Atrå. It is one of the churches for the Tinn parish which is part of the Øvre Telemark prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Agder og Telemark. The white, wooden church was built in a long church design in 1836 using plans drawn up by the architect Hans Linstow. The church seats about 300 people.

The first church at Atrå was a wooden stave church that was built during the 12th century. Legend says that the church was consecrated in 1180 by Bishop Ragnar of the Ancient Diocese of Hamar. We know quite a bit about what the church looked like. A drawing that was probably made at the time it was demolished shows some of it, and memories from those who remember the church were also written down. Particularly important was the story of Hellek H. Husevold, who said that there were three doors, to the north, south, and west. The door to the south was quite narrow and you could see the marks of knife sheaths that had scraped against the frame as people walked through it. There were two steps up to get from the nave to the chancel. On one side of the altar was a picture of Adam and Eve, and the altarpiece had a picture of Christ and the disciples. There were two galleries, one for men and one for women. The main door in the west originally went inwards, but in 1823 there was an order that it had to be opened the other way (this was the year before Grue Church had burned down, and more than a hundred people had to die when they could not open the doors leading in). By 1799, records show that the old church was in poor condition and some of the stave poles were rotting which had led to structural shifting and crooked walls. In 1814, this church served as an election church (valgkirke). Together with more than 300 other parish churches across Norway, it was a polling station for elections to the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly which wrote the Constitution of Norway. This was Norway's first national elections. Each church parish was a constituency that elected people called "electors" who lat

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).