MARIA KIRKEN

The St. Mary’s Church is a parish church which is located in the old capital of Norway, Bergen. Bergen is located on the west coast of Norway and founded in 1070 (1)(5). The building process of the St. Mary’s church started in 1130 and took 50 years to finish. It is one of three churches left out of the eighteen built in the medieval era. It is a Basilica form church, built in a Romanesque style.

The Church is located in the “Bryggen” area, which is in the northern central part of the city. The entrance of the church is directed towards the North-West, towards the fjord. It is located behind the “Tyskebryggen”(the German docks), which is the old centre of the Hanseatic commercial activities in Norway.

The church is connected to the city centre with Øvregaten, dreggsallmenningen and the 577. The 577 is the main street following the coast from the top of Bergen to the centre point where it disperses into different streets.

On the location of the Maria church excavations have revealed remains of an old stone church, which seem to never have been completed. As mentioned previously the construction of the church started in 1130s. The exact date of completion is unkown but it is believed to be around the 1180s.

In 1198 there was a town fire, caused by an attack of the “Bagli party”. Which caused major damage to the church, during the rebuilding some architectural changes were made.

Later in 1248 an even bigger fire terrorized the city, causing more damage to the church. During the reconstruction, several changes were made. The towers where increased and the chancel was extended. This was the last major damage due to city wide fires. Later fires only caused minor damage.

Due to the large population of Germans in 1408 in this part of Bergen, the church was often referred to as “the German church”. The German merchants where very wealthy and kept the church from turning into ruins, unlike many other churches in the city.

In 1776 an sacristy was added on the south side of the original church. At that time it were separate buildings, with separate roofs.

In 1803 Both aforementioned building were covered by a long roof making it a so-called “longhouse”.

In 1814 this church combined with 300 other churches across Norway was used as polling stations for the elections of the “Norwegian Constituent Assembly” which created the Constitution of Norway. This was the first Norwegian national election.

In the years 1863 – 1876 a major refurbishment and overdue maintenance was performed. The sacristy was expanded to the east and outer walls were restored. At this time the ceiling was covered by a lime plaster on a reed base.

Not before 1874, after the large population of Germans had left the city, the church turned back into a Parish church. Even though the sermons where still held in German until the First World War.

In 1859 one the towers was torn down, and it wasn’t until 1863 to 1876 that the church underwent a major restoration led by the architect Christian Christie. Which included the construction of the second tower. He would later also supervise in the restorations of the Bergen Cathedral and the Haakon’s Hall.

From 1920 – 1930 the architect Landmark and painter Erdmann were involved in repairs on the wall paintings, and replacement of doors and windows.

The outer wall was raised to the level of the roof in 1965. In the same period the sacristy was modernized with a new flooring and a kitchen was installed.

Also from 2010 until 2015 the church was closed down for another major restoration. The reason for the renovations was due to the concern of the second tower collapsing.

As stated in the previous part, the church was constructed in the 12th century. The old part before the reconstruction in 1248 belongs to the classical Romanesque style, which was very dominant in the building traditions during that time period in Bergen.

The choir which was extended after the fire in 1248, was built in the Gothic style, which was newly introduced in this time.

The towers have the same width as the aisles, and the nave continues all the way until the western front. Originally it was believed that the western front was composed of two square towers, with a vestibule, narrower than the nave. The west portal seems unfinished according to Liden.

The main material of the Church is soapstone. During the time of construction Hordaland (now included in Vestland) had seventeen different soapstone quarries. Five of these quarries delivered stones to the construction, as these have been identified. The oldest parts have the higher quality of material, a brownish carbonate-rich adhesive. Some areas, like the towers, green slates have been used instead.

The Choir and the southern aisles used large fine stone blocks. The details of construction, show that the craftsmen, probably had a background from the Lund Cathedral.

The church is a basilica constructed of a longhouse with high nave and two lower aisles. The nave walls consist of arcade rows with pillars connected to arches. It has triphonic passages with openings to the main room.

The church uses a building technique known in Norway as “kistemur”, which refers to “core and veneer” construction. Straight cut blocks on the outside filled with a layer of rubble in the middle.

Nowadays most countries have developed a set of rules to ensure a certain level of build quality, as well as a level of comfort. Generally speaking these sets are known as the building code. In the case of adaptive re-use several aspects of the old building need to be conserved. This usually results in a conflicting situation when the modern building code is applied. This legislation is in need of an adaptation, to allow the preserve the old building while integrating it in modern society.

Norway is a country which has had a rough architectural past, combined with a tradition of wooden constructions, resulting in very few remaining historical buildings compared to other countries. Although todays Norway belongs to the richer countries, this only happened fairly recently. The discovery of large oil reserves in the 1970’s led to a very fast economic development.

The point in case being that there were relatively few historical buildings / sites to begin with, until recently there was no budget for a process to preserve and re-integrate.

It was not before 2019 the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) commissioned SINTEF to write a report concerning the emerging adaptive reuse of existing construction and sites.

The Maria Church was at that time already analysed, and “rebuild”. The process was done by contemporary standards. There were at that time however no structural guidelines on how to perform such a major task compared to countries like Spain and Italy.

Not only were there no guidelines, there is no thorough description of the work done either. There are however some good papers written about the structural and superficial analysis, like the walls, both interior and exterior, as well as the ceilings, doors, windows and plasterwork.

Most of the knowledge of this historical building was written down by Hans Emil Liden in 1980. And as expected their desire to preserve important details of the church, this collided with the building code at that time. The letter of Jan Lohne asking for permission to reconstruct the foundation without abiding the law for cultural heritage shows that some definition of “historical buildings” was present. ` With this perspective many countries have started to evaluate their way of integrating old structures and sites that have been rendered abandoned or need repurposing.

The structure of the roof has been damaged due to water. In the tower the supporting beams of the floors were anchored in the walls without moisture barrier, causing the beams to rot. Shown in the red tints are the beams, rafters and sleepers that need to be replaced.

The red areas are damaged as a result of the work done in 1930, and is therefore not stable to hold the roof. The work done in caused damage to the cornices and roof construction. The orange areas are the outer walls that have been affected due to the stones shifting and need to be fixed, which was not done properly anchored in previous repairs. The pink area is, as the tower hit by water damaged and the wooden structure has started to rot. There were cavities in the outer wall containing pools of water. Lack of maintenance of the walls caused damage to the protecting plasterwork.

Figure 12 shows the mapping of the front façade. Using a laser scanner the wall is checked for internal voids. The red marks the areas with a high probability of a void inside the wall.

During the survey parts of the ceiling in the northern part of the church have been removed. This inner structure is therefore exposed. The original ceiling consists of wooden ribs, covered by reed mats followed by a layer of lime plaster.

Analysing the internal structure it is believed that the ceiling was done at the same time as the exterior roof. This can be assumed due to the plaster spills on the rafters. The ceiling was covered in numerous layers of grey and white paint.

The eastern part has no signs of lime plastered ceilings. Either it has been removed previously or it never existed.

Most of the walls were covered in lime plaster, with several layers of paint as a finishing. In the eastern wall a window was removed and the remaining opening closed by masonry and cement.

The east wall has traces of walled around the window in the gable field. Cement has been used in the masonry. There are vertical settlement cracks on the north side of the door. The south wall has a larger settlement crack about 50 cm from the southeast corner.

The northern wall is not covered in lime plaster, instead it has several layers of paint. The wall reaches all the way up ceiling to the roof. The part above the ceiling is covered in a 1 cm thick layer of greasy lime plaster, finished with a few layers of paint.

During the time of the investigation of the room, the division, fixtures, floors and baseboards, were all removed. A white latex paint is applied to each surface.

The method used to register the colouring was done by analysis of the different layers by both macroscopic visual and microscopic visual inspection. The findings were categorized after the NCS-S standard.

It has to be noted that exposed oil-based paint will tend to yellow over time, and lime paint mostly becomes much darker over time, especially in pigmented variants.

Of course the analysis was subdivided in periods, with a subdivision in phases.

Finally recommendations were made addressing each category. Generally the second period phase one was the preferred colour scheme, being 1863 – 1876.

For the more practical implications the repairs include removal of non-adherent layers or pre-treatment with a primer coating, with or without sanding.

The Maria church is facing some challenges when looking into a way to rehabilitate the pathologies. Some of the earlier repairs were done wrong, creating more complications than fixes. There is a strong suspicion of damage not visible without opening up some of the structure.

Some of the work done is of historical value, while being not up to standard. This translates in a costly time-consuming rebuild, with many conflicting issues with the modern building code.

On top of that he environment is more damaging nowadays than previously, demanding updated and/or alternate solutions.

The structural elements in the roof that have been damaged due to water needs partial replacing. It is opted to remove the rotten part, but leave the parts that are still intact. This is done to keep the rest of the roof in its original state in fear of damaging it even more.

Figure 20 shows the roof structure with the damaged parts replaced. When working on restauration, there is a key difference to new construction. In new construction, parts are brought to the site and can be “easily” assembled. In restauration the workers need a certain level of competence, they need to be able to form the raw materials to match the old styles and techniques used. Shown in figure 21 is one of the workers manually fitting the rafter for the structure.

Shown in figure 22 is the outer bracing of the rafters. Same as in the other beam repair it is chosen to only replace a part of the rafter instead of the full rafter.

As seen earlier there are several voids in the outer walls of the church. The voids are located and a hole is drilled (in the joints between the stones). After cleaning the voids, they are filled with a limestone mixture (shown in figure 23).

It is recommended to go back to the colours found from the restoration done in the period of 1863 to 1876. The ceiling and finishing cornice is painted in NCS 0500-N. The walls are done in a grey oil based paint, NCS 2000-N. The wood elements, like doors and framing is sanded down to bare wood before painted with NCS 7020-Y70R, with a topcoat of gloss 80.

During these restorations try-outs should be done and left until the completed, so that they can be referenced making sure the final product is up to standard.

Before the painting can be done, it is important that it is properly prepared. The different surfaces need to be cleaned in various ways to make sure the paint adheres properly and future restorations can be avoided.

It is of the utmost importance that the pathologies found, are dealt with in a way that the original structure and style are kept intact, whilst being aware of the present building code.

Architects with knowledge and experience of this type of construction and restauration should be used, and help to think about the different solutions to make sure the original glory of the church can be restored.

The present trend of sustainable architecture should of course be omnipresent in a project of this magnitude.