Religion sure made some big, lavish, and very ornate buildings. Norway has a plethora of churches all over the place. From small local gathering halls, a fairly famous cathedral, and a lot of ugly modern monstrosities. Architects adore concrete far too much for my liking. Anyhow, the other day I visited this marvelous old stone building surrounded by a sloped cemetery here in Bergen.
The old chapel is practically ancient, yet well kept. Despite my misgivings about fanatic fools, there is just so much to see and notice on this old lump of stone.
The structure itself is built on an elevated platform with stairs on both sides and several arches in the middle. The arches themselves are covered with old and sturdy metal doors that have weathered a lot it seems. Inside said entrypoint there are rows of dusty shelves used to store burial urns.
There is nothing there now and the sign is clearly lying about visiting hours. I crank that up to it being an old sign. Like all traditional grave sites, there is a tarnished and wobbly fence around the lot to keep spirits of the dead inside and to provide some solitude. The architect went into painful detail to make the building symmetrical.
Information indicates the chapel was built in 1920 by Sigurd Lunde. A very active same prolific fellow in the Bergen area during the 1900. He sure implemented some nice round arches into the construction, making the church both traditional looking, while being fairly minimalistic.
Njål signing out
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