Breim Church

Breim Church (Norwegian: Breim kyrkje) is a parish church in Gloppen Municipality in Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway. It is located in the village of Re on the shore of the lake Breimsvatnet. The church is part of the Breim parish in the Nordfjord deanery in the Diocese of Bjørgvin. The white, wooden church was built in 1886 by the architect Haakon Thorsen. The church seats about 500 people. It was consecrated on 9 July 1886.

History

There have been a total of four earlier churches located at the village of Re. The first one was built in the 13th century and it stood until there was a fire in the rectory in 1334. The church is first mentioned in written sources in 1308 and was probably a stave church. It is unclear where exactly the church stood. After the fire, it is assumed that a new church was built at Re in the late 1330s. This church was also most likely a stave church. That church was replaced by a cruciform church in 1620, but that building it was poorly constructed, and it was replaced by a new church in 1667. In the 1880s, it was decided to tear down the old church so that a new, larger church could be built. It was replaced by the current church in 1886, the same year that the Breim parish was separated from Gloppen to become a separate municipality.

Breim

Breim is a former municipality in Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Nordfjord in the eastern part of the present-day Gloppen Municipality. The municipality existed from 1886 until 1964 and the administrative center was the village of Reed (sometimes called Re).

Breim municipality was located to the east of Gloppen, south of Stryn and the Utvik mountains, west of the Jostedalsbreen glacier, and north of Jølster. The municipality was centered on the lake Breimsvatn. A lot of the inhabitants of Breim lived on the shores of the lake or in the large river valley extending east from the lake. The main church for the municipality was Breim Church, located in Reed.

Name

The area's original name comes from the Old Norse word Breiðefni. The first element of that name comes from the old word Breiðr which means "broad" and the last element is efni which means "condition". Throughout the centuries, the name changed through misunderstandings and corruptions, and it changed to Breiheim or Breidem, where the second element of the name became like the old word -heimr meaning "home". The current spelling of the name was settled upon by the 1800s.