Qualla: Susendal Church

Susendal Church: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arkivdyret, Public domain. In 1998 the bishop came to Svenskvollen and the verdict was blunt. The chapel in the Susendal valley had stood since 1916 — red-painted, seating about seventy, known locally as the school chapel — and by the time Øystein Ingar Larsen made his visitation the building had decayed past rescuing. What was agreed that day was to deconsecrate it and carry the church silver out through the door. In most places that is where the story of a small rural chapel ends. In Susendal it was the beginning of one. The valley decided to build its own replacement, and three years later the same bishop came back to consecrate what they had made.

Read more: Susendal Church on Qualla

Image: Arkivdyret | Public domain

Susendal Church: Built on Dugnad

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Knut, CC BY-SA 4.0. The word for it in Norwegian is dugnad — unpaid collective work for a shared purpose, the mechanism by which small Norwegian communities have historically got everything done that no authority was going to do for them. Susendal Church was raised on dugnad by the people of the val...

Read more: Susendal Church on Qualla

Image: Knut | CC BY-SA 4.0

Susendal Church: Sower, Manger, Harvest

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arkivdyret, Public domain. The altarpiece is a triptych of three paintings by Karl Erik Harr, one of Norway's best-known painters of northern landscape and coastal life, born in Kvæfjord in Troms in 1940 and made a knight of the Order of St. Olav in 2001. The subject he chose speaks directly to the room it...

Read more: Susendal Church on Qualla

Image: Arkivdyret | Public domain

Susendal Church: A Hundred Metres Apart

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arkivdyret, Public domain. The 1916 chapel was never torn down. It still stands barely a hundred metres from the church that replaced it — the two buildings within easy sight of one another, one holding services, one holding its shape. Hattfjelldal Museum looks after the old chapel now, along with the Gamm...

Read more: Susendal Church on Qualla

Image: Arkivdyret | Public domain

Susendal Church: The Valley That Hums

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arkivdyret, Public domain. Susendal — Såvsoenvuemie in Southern Sámi — is a valley in Hattfjelldal Municipality, close to the Swedish border, with Børgefjell National Park for a neighbour. Local explanation of the name points at the river: wherever you stand in the valley, people say, you can hear the Susn...

Read more: Susendal Church on Qualla

Image: Arkivdyret | Public domain