Archival research and documentation behind the research article published in Kunst og Kultur:

Provenience of a Monument: Serial Rediscovery in the Image History of Urnes Stave Church

Below is Thomas Fearnley’s watercolour from July 28, 1826 – the very first known sketch made of the church, and one of three rediscovered through archival research as part of my PhD. Histories of the church have often previously begun with the images from J.C. Dahl’s folio from 1837, to which the article provides a microhistorical prologue, mapping the movements of three artists during the summer of 1826.

Both Fearnley and Mathias Wilhelm Eckhoff, Dahl’s travel companion on his first tour of Norway that year, made numerable sketches of churches in the landscape, documenting many that have now disappeared. The medieval stave churches in particular have since become a central part of Norwegian cultural heritage.

See my mapping of their journeys from sketchbook and diary entries:

Eckhoff in particular documented many churches that were demolished in the years afterwards. Dahl’s publication was part of an intensive preservation effort and a wider conversation that led to the foundation of the Norwegian National Trust in 1844.

However, my archival studies suggest that Dahl was less interested in drawing them than his colleagues. In the case of Urnes Stave Church, now a museum and UNESCO listed world heritage monument, I haven’t yet found a trace of evidence to suggest that he had been there in person. Fearnley’s drawing, and Eckhoff’s diary recalling his trip to ‘Urnæs kirke‘, provide a rare glimpse of the building from when it was in use as a functioning church (see article for diary translations). In the time since, an assumptive art-historical simplification has established Dahl’s name in connection with the ‘discovery’ of Norwegian stave churches, whilst it seems others may have been making important contributions to the conversation.

Their traces of other involvements are becoming more visible through the digitalisation of archive and library collections, and the enhanced search capabilities of those catalogues. This sketch by Eckhoff of Atrå Stave Church in Telemark, is one of many interesting archival discoveries I made (beyond the scope of the article on Urnes), not previously accounted for by art and architectural historians or included in the literature. His sketchbooks and diaries alone provide a fascinating alternative perspective on early preservational initiatives, adding yet further detail to even this well-researched field!