Goslar has been honoured with an ensemble of UNESCO accolades, some tied to a place and some not, and so it was pretty remarkable to find another piece of World Heritage reconstructed in one of the suburbs of the town.
In Hahnenklee, there is a stave church, called the Gustav-Adolf (named after the Swedish monarch that reigned during the Thirty Years’ War and made his country a European power) and was constructed in 1907, inspired by those outstanding examples to be found in Norway.Many of the main architectural elements come from the iconic edifice of Borgund, but the wooden structure is a pastiche of all then surviving examples. The interior felt like being in the galley of a great wooden ship, a reflection of the Vikings’ sea-going skills translated to architecture and preserved for the ages.
The organ, housed in all that ornate carpentry, was something brilliant in itself but the musical possibilities don’t end there. Just separated from the congregation hall stands a belfry that houses a carillon (Glockenspiel) and a very skilled carilloneur gives performances on the church lawn in the summers.