History and Legends
The original church has been dated to the 1130s. During centuries, folklore has produced many legends on Skaga stave church. One of the legends relates that a Viking warrior named Ramunder the Evil owned a homestead at lake Unden nearby. His daughter Skaga was so weak when she was born that he decided to leave her in the forest to be devoured by wild beasts, which was an old Scandinavian custom when children were not desired. However, one of Ramunder's dogs discovered her and carried her back home. The mother thought this to be a sign from the Norse gods and let her live. Some time later, Ramunder departed on a Viking expedition and one of the spoils he brought back from the South was a monk. The monk and Skaga became good friends, and he baptized her in secret, and later when Skaga had inherited the homestead, she had the stave church built where people conducted their pagan sacrifices, in order to help the Christianization of the area. Eventually it became the church of its own parish.
In the 14th century, the Black Death arrived and killed the entire population in the parish. The forest reclaimed the pastures, the fields and the settlements. Generations later, when people anew settled in the area, the stave church was the only remaining building, and it was once again the centre of a parish. There are many traditions on how the chapel was rediscovered. One legend relates that a hunter spotted what he believed to be a mossy rock in the forest. On closer inspection he discovered that it was a building, and he passed through the verdant gate. In the darkness, he was frightened by discovering a sleeping bear, which he managed to kill.
Until 1774, there were services in the church four times per year: Lady Day, Ascension of Jesus, Midsummer and Michaelmas. Later, the clergymen refused to have any dealings with the church because of "its derelict condition", but it was likely that the aversion related to the sacrifices at the location. In 1779, the church forbade any services at the stave church in order to let the church rot away through disuse and disrepair, hopefully together with the local supersitions that surrounded the church.
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