The Wang Temple is an old Viking-built structure that you would expect to find in Norway, but not in Poland. Yet, the temple is located in the Polish city of Karpacz.
(Find out why later, in a section about the temple’s history.)
At present, the Wang Temple is a small at 19 meters long (63 ft) and 9 meters wide (30 ft) Lutheran church.
The town of Karpacz is a charming tourist destination in southwestern Poland, near the border with Czechia and not far from the border with Germany. This is the area of the Karkonosze Mountains.
Interesting History of Wang Temple
The temple was built sometime at the end of the XII and the beginning of the XIII century in southern Norway. This explains its unmistakable Viking architecture, although many decorative elements were added after the reconstruction.
In the XIX century, the church was found to be too small for the local congregation, and it also required a costly renovation. For these two reasons, it was decided that it should be sold. So, the church was placed on the market.
This is kind of wild, as you usually don’t hear about buildings being sold and MOVED very often, especially in the middle of the XIX century. However, it happened to the Wang Temple.
The Prussian king, Frederic Wilhelm IV purchased the temple for the whole amount of 427 marks after he was convinced by the Norwegian painter, Johan Christian Dahl, who was residing at the time in Dresden, Germany.
Soon after cataloging it, the temple was disassembled and in 1841 was transported in crates to the Royal Museum in Berlin with the idea that eventually it would be reassembled on an island near the city.
Eventually, the king decided not to erect the temple on the island and began looking for another suitable place for it.
Then, in 1842, thanks to the efforts of Countess Frederica von Reden from Bukowiec, the king decided to move it to Karpacz, so it could serve the local evangelicals residing in the area.
Count Christian Leopold von Schaffgotsch offered his land on the slopes of Czarna Gora for the temple’s new location.
The king, himself, placed the cornerstone, and two years later, in 1844, the church was opened and consecrated.
The Architectural Details
The church is a four-post single-nave stave church. A stave church is a type of medieval Christian church built from wood using a post and lintel construction method. Over hundreds of years, over a thousand such churches were built in Norway, yet only 31 survived till the present time in the country and one in Poland.
When reconstructing the church, the builders reused only the main structure consisting of sills, posts, and wall plates. Besides these structural elements, they also incorporated the original carved door frames into the rebuilt church.
However, the rest was designed and reconstructed from new materials in the XIX century.
The material used for the reconstruction was the Norwegian pine which is a very resilient kind of wood.
The external door frames with half-columns are decorated with interweaving dragons and plants. The stylized lions symbolizing the beasts that keep guard at the gates were placed on their capitals.
In the top corners of both doorways are carved winged dragons tearing apart the horizontally placed figure eight possibly symbolizing the everlasting combat between good and evil.
The remaining columns, which are in front of the altar, were reconstructed.
The interior of the church is lit through 174 little crown-glass windows.
The rooftops are decorated with pinnacles, i.e., the projections in the shape of gaping dragon mouths which resemble the ornaments characteristic of the Vikings’ longships. The original church did not have any such ornaments. (See the black and white image.)
The church is surrounded by the cloisters which protect it against the cold.
In the old days, people would leave their weapons and fishing nets there.
A 24-meter (80 ft) tall tower was constructed with Silesian granite to protect the church from strong gusts of wind blowing from the direction of the highest peak in Karkonosze Mountains – Śnieżka.
However, when you look at the picture of the original church before it was moved it was a much simpler and smaller structure. Therefore, I wonder if it still could be considered a Viking-era building or only a relatively modern structure with few original structural elements from the original church.
Visiting Hours
15th April – 31st October – 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
1st November – 14th April – 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Tickets (2024 prices)
Adults – 13,00 zł ($4.25)
Children and students up to the age of 26 – 7,00 zł ($1.75)
Camera/camcorder use – 5,00 zł – ($1.25)
The church lot access only – 2,00 zł ($0.50)
Final Thoughts
I would say that Wang Temple being mostly fairly new (XIX century) structure does not generate the excitement of the original premise of Viking Temple. Therefore, I can’t say that I would recommend going out of the way to visit it. However, it is still an interesting example of stave construction without the use of metal fasteners.
While Wang Church might not be worth the trip to the area, there are many other attractions around worth visiting – Sniezka Mountain, Ksiaz Castle, Chojnik Castle, Bolkow Castle, and many more a little further away.
So, if you decide to visit other points of interest in the area, it might be worth stopping over and visiting Wang Temple to see this unique object of, at least to some small degree, Viking culture.
References
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If you are interested in other attractions in the area, you might want to read my post about Czocha Castle.
