That’s Norway to Paint a Church

On Vinjevatn lake in Telemark county, Norway, three hours inland from the southeast coast and just below the mountain plateau of Hardangervidda – a rural area defined by small farms between steep, wooded hills and winding creeks – is the Vinje church, which pops out like a pink flower from the uniform green landscape. The ‘Law of Jante’ is an oft-quoted social contract expressing the Norwegian attitude of keeping ambitious and original spirits in check, but apart from the traditional lafte technique of walls of stacked, interlocking logs, Jarand Aasmundsson Rønjom, a woodcarver who built the church in 1796, did not abide by the principle. The pale-pink exterior and painted pattern is peculiar (while the interiors of Norwegian churches can be extravagant, the exteriors are usually a solid black, white or grey) and, for an impoverished area, the décor is an unusually ambitious take on a late Baroque style, adding Tuscan-striping to the corners of the façade and carved Roman columns to a building essentially constructed like a large wood cabin.

A century after it was built, the Law of Jante prevailed and the Vinje church was painted all white, inside and out, as so many other churches were at the time. Today, across Norway, there is fierce debate about the lack of colour in civic spaces, following eras of collective design in white, grey and, currently, black. This echoes the sentiment in Oslo in 1927, when artist Henrik Sørensen returned to the country after many years in Paris, and wrote a passionate article asking why the walls of the city were all coated in simple lime plaster. It sparked a debate leading prominent Oslo bureaucrats to form initiatives matching artists with real estate owners, with the aim of adding colour to the city.

Vinje church, with its pink exterior and Tuscan corner details. These first appeared in 1796, when the church was built, and were reinstated in the 20th century after decades of Vinje succumbing to the Norwegian ‘Law of Jante’, or unshowiness. Rumour has it that the current colour would have been more of a red if the conservator rather than local painter had had their way

Five years later, Henrik Sørensen sought to bring colour back to the Vinje church too. He had spent many summers in the area, revelling in Telemark’s rich and unique history of woodcarving, rose painting and folk music. The community, perhaps smitten with the attention of a cosmopolitan artist, granted him permission to restore the interior of the church, with local artists and craftsmen offering their help.

The municipal office tasked the decorative painter Finn Krafft to unearth the original colours of the 1796 version of the church. Krafft discovered that the altar had been painted in subtle reds, greys and blues, with a marbling effect on the columns and the exterior edges; the rest had simply been exposed wood. Now, with the church primed all white and the municipality’s blessing, the building could be reimagined in a manner inspired by a local decorative painting style, infused with artistic contributions. Indeed, aside from returning the original colours to the altar and exterior, Sørensen and his motley crew were free to invent the rest – and they went to town, so to speak.

The altar, much of it sporting its original scheme from 1796, is surrounded by colours that were introduced in 1932, when Henrik Sørensen painted the blond, beardless Christ and two figures in traditional Telemark costumes – a typical touch by the artist, whose altarpieces elsewhere in Norway give the gospel a local inflection

The dome was painted by Henrik Sørensen, a design strikingly different from the painting he did for the altar. On each side are noodling ornaments painted wet-on-wet by Nanna Kiønig, an artist who had moved to Telemark with her painter husband. Wearing pants in this rural area was unusual, but as she was working high up in the scaffolding it was apparently considered a lesser evil

The wooden structures and carved ornaments provided an outline within which to work – a painting-by-numbers process where zones were delegated to crews of painters and woodcarvers. Walls, rafters and benches were doused in saturated hues of yellow, purple, red and blue. The carved flowers of the balcony were highlighted in yellow against the red railing, and select panels in the banister were filled with painted angels, with dark lines twisting and turning on the gallery ceilings, painted wet-on-wet. There were other surprises too: below the floor the crew found a black book of spells from the 1500s, now in the collection of Katedralskolen in Oslo.

Inside the dome, Sørensen’s own decorative flair is on full display: a fierce composition of fiery, angular flames around a quadratic composition in primary colours – think Marsden Hartley’s German paintings or Hilma af Klint’s spirited temple canvases – applied with the confident gestures of a painter, leaving the burr of the brush in plain sight. Sørensen also added his touch to the altarpiece, depicting a beardless, blond Jesus in front of a couple in traditional Telemark costumes.

Facing the altar, the gallery balustrade features panels decorated with angels

The ochre-infused white with red and light-blue detailing is original

The wood carving is by Dagfin Werenskiold to a design by his father, Erik, a famed artist and dear friend of Henrik Sørensen. Each row of benches bears a unique motif painted in red, green and gold on a blue background

It was a profoundly vernacular interpretation. The unusual punch of colour owes much to the Telemark culture and the standing of those who offered to donate their time and talent. Only Krafft was paid by the municipal office for his work; the rest did it for free, in a time of great poverty across 1930s Norway. But the municipal coat of arms for Telemark is a billy goat, after all – perhaps a telling sign of its people’s strong-headedness.

Vinje Church is located in Vinje municipality, Telemark county, Norway