The Bell in the Lake

Even bells have a home. The inspiration was the true fate of the wooden Vang stave church, which originally stood in the Norwegian region of Valdres. In the 19th century, it was dismantled, sold, and subsequently transported to present-day Poland, where it was rebuilt in the town of Karpacz on the northern foothills of the Giant Mountains. The church stands there to this day as a significant historical monument, a reminder not only of Norwegian architecture but also of the unusual story of its journey across half of Europe. In the 1880s, Norway was plagued by poverty and famine. The settlement of Buttangen was twenty years behind its neighbouring settlements, which were thirty years behind the towns, which in turn lagged fifty-five years behind the rest of Europe. While Europe’s metropolises were flourishing, the pastor of Buttangen was pondering how to prevent more of his parishioners from freezing to death in the church during services. He intended to sell the ancient wooden church, along with its bells, to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and use the money raised to build a new one. But can the church and its bells—which are shrouded in the legend of two sisters, conjoined twins, in whose memory their father had the bells cast—really be for sale? A young German architect, Gerhard Schönauer, arrives in Buttangen to document the wooden church, dismantle it, and prepare it for shipment to Dresden. He has no idea that he is about to become part of a love triangle…