Preservation of Distemper Painting: Indoor Monitoring Tools for Risk Assessment and Decision Making in Kvernes Stave Church

Abstract

During the Medieval period, over 1000 stave churches were thought to have been constructed in Norway. However, currently, only 28 of these churches remain and only 19 still have distemper wall paintings. The cultural significance of these structures, and more specifically their elaborate distemper wall paintings, has changed over time, as have the means and methods for preserving these monuments. Deeper knowledge of the current state of these structures, along with environmental monitoring and modeling will open the way to a better understanding of preservation. This paper presents a case study for unheated Norwegian wooden churches based on data collected from Kvernes stave church. There are three aims for this paper: (i) to describe the typical indoor conditions similar to the historic climate of stave churches; (ii) determine the common characteristics of distemper paint found within stave churches; (iii) and develop a risk assessment tool to evaluate the climate-induced risk factors in stave churches. The outcome of this work will contribute to research performed within the Sustainable Management of Heritage Buildings in a Long-term Perspective (SyMBoL) project which aims to develop a better understanding of climate induced risks for stave churches, and ultimately to better manage environmental risk.

Natural hazards affecting cultural heritage: assessment of flood and landslide risk for the 28 existing Norwegian stave churches

“…In fact, beside the book by Bakken et al . (2016) written upon completion of the SCPP, few peer reviewed international works generally exist on SCs (Freeman et al ., 2021, 2023, Olstad et al ., 2020, Berg, 2018, Espedal, 2017, Hamre et al ., 2007, Egenberg et al ., 2003, Olstad, 1994; Christie, 1978) and none of them is focused on the whole group of still existing 28 SCs. This is the reason why the first part of the results section aims to homogeneously collect and report all together existing information on architectural features, conservation status and geographical attributes for the whole group of SCs.…”

Natural climate reconstruction in the Norwegian stave churches through time series processing with variational autoencoders

“…In this framework, being able to gather as much information as possible on the ambient physical conditions surrounding a given building or building asset may be of extreme help. Generally, the microclimatic situation is depicted by recovering and/or collecting time-series of temperature and relative humidity of the selected environment; however, this often implies to carry out extensive and time-consuming on-thefield monitoring campaigns (Frasca et al, 2017;Olstad et al, 2020;Varas-Muriel et al, 2014). To avoid too long and expensive monitoring campaigns, exploiting tools of Building Simulation (Kramer et al, 2013;de Wit, 2006) could be of help, for instance.…”

“…Generally, the microclimatic situation is depicted by recovering and/or collecting time-series of temperature and relative humidity of the selected environment; however, this often implies to carry out extensive and time-consuming on-the-field monitoring campaigns (Frasca et al. , 2017; Olstad et al. , 2020; Varas-Muriel et al.…”

Machine learning and engineering feature approaches to detect events perturbing the indoor microclimate in Ringebu and Heddal stave churches (Norway)

“…The indoor microclimate of these cultural sites has been directly governed by the external climate for centuries until the 19-20th century, when heating systems were installed in several sites to improve the indoor thermal comfort for the congregation. The main consequence of this climate control and of the presence of a great amount of people inside the stave churches is the resulting variation of the microclimate, which directly affects the churches' preservation as they are mainly made of wood (UNI EN 15757:2010 Standard -Conservation of Cultural Property -Specifications for Temperature and Relative Humidity to Limit Climate-Induced Mechanical Damage in Organic Hygroscopic Materials, 2010; Olstad et al, 2020). The problem of detecting the events (i.e.…”