Qualla: Trones Church

Trones Church: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henny stokseth, CC BY-SA 3.0 no. The white timber church at Trones has spent the better part of two centuries being credited to a man who had not yet been born when it was finished. Reference works name Ole Scheistrøen as its architect, and Scheistrøen was in fact one of the most prolific church builders this part of Norway ever produced. He simply arrived in the world on 16 August 1833, a year after the congregation first filed through these doors. He did leave his mark on the building, but that came later. The true version is the better story anyway: a scattered forest congregation that spent a decade turning a royal permission slip into a roof.

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Trones Church: A Decree, and Then a Decade

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henny stokseth, CC BY-SA 3.0 no. On 14 November 1822 a royal decree granted the people of Namsskogan permission to build a chapel of their own. Permission was not a building. The settlements strung along the upper Namsen were small and widely separated, the nearest church lay far down the valley, and the ten yea...

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Trones Church: Timber, Whitewash, and a Hundred and Fifty Seats

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henny stokseth, CC BY-SA 3.0 no. What they built was a long church — the commonest Norwegian plan, a rectangular nave running into a narrower chancel on a single axis, everything pointing one direction. The material was timber, the finish white, and the seating capacity about 150. That number is worth pausing on...

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Trones Church: The Builder Who Came Later

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henny stokseth, CC BY-SA 3.0 no. Ole Scheistrøen was born in Skei, in what is now Surnadal Municipality, and he never much cared for the title of architect — he called himself a builder. Over a long career he drew and raised something close to fifty Norwegian churches and supervised construction on a dozen more ...

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Trones Church: Older Than the Name Itself

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Municipal Archives of Trondheim from Trondheim, Norway, CC BY 2.0. The chapel was eventually upgraded to full parish church status, and today it is the main church for the Namsskogan parish, part of the Namdal deanery in the Diocese of Nidaros. It has two much younger siblings in the same municipality: Skorovatn Chapel, from 1965, and Bjørhusdal...

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Image: Municipal Archives of Trondheim from Trondheim, Norway | CC BY 2.0