Faroe Islands · FO

Kirkjubøar kirkja / Ólavskirkjan

Saint Olav's Church — Ólavskirkjan, also called Kirkjubøar kirkja — is the oldest church in the Faroe Islands still in regular use. A low, whitewashed hall of unhewn stone sitting on the sea edge of tiny Kirkjubøur on southwestern Streymoy, it looks modest from the outside, but it is the surviving heart of a place that for centuries was the spiritual capital of the archipelago: the seat of the medieval Catholic bishops of the Faroes. Built in the 1200s and named for the Norwegian king St Olav, the church was the main church of the Faroese diocese from the early 1100s until the Reformation. What makes a visit feel special is not grandeur but depth: you are standing in a continuous place of worship nearly 800 years old, in a village whose name itself simply means "the church settlement," beside the soaring roofless walls of the never-finished Magnus Cathedral and the old bishop's-farmstead-turned-residence.