Kyrkhärbret i Älvdalen, Medieval timber storage house near Älvdalens kyrka, Sweden.
Kyrkhärbret i Älvdalen is a log-timber house standing by the vicarage south of Älvdalen church. Its horizontal logs are joined at the corners, and dendrochronological dating places the timber at 1285. The building stored the parish tithe, and in Älvdalen dialect it is called Tjyörtjbaureð.
The building was constructed in 1285 and functioned as a storage facility for tithes collected from the local church community. It stands as one of the oldest dated wooden buildings in Sweden, bearing witness to medieval times.
In Älvdalen the building is known in the local Elfdalian dialect as Tjyörtjbaureð, a name that preserves the parish's own word for the storehouse. It held the tithe, the share of harvest and produce that parishioners owed the church, so the building stood at the economic centre of the parish beside the vicarage.
The log building stands by the vicarage just south of Älvdalen's church, a short walk from the churchyard. It is an outdoor structure with no indoor facilities, so dress for Dalarna weather. The ground around it can be uneven and muddy after rain.
Dendrochronology dates the timber to 1285, making it Sweden's oldest dated secular wooden building until 2008, when Ingatorp's Kyrkbod briefly seemed half a century older; that dating later proved to concern a secondary part, and Ingatorp is now dated 1294. Only Eldhuset at Zorns gammelgård, dated 1237, is older among Swedish log buildings.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,648 contributors worldwide.