Lunch in the churchyard

We sometimes pull into church parking lots when we travel; they often have nice big level lots that are easy in & out with our rig. Today, out in the middle of farmland, we pulled into a church that was such a delightful surprise.

Vestre Nidaros Kirke is Norwegian and translates to Western Nidaro Church. This is a Norwegian Lutheran church with a long and eventful history. It was especially interesting to me as my paternal grandmother, whose parents immigrated from Norway, grew up in this part of SD - and we are a bunch of Lutherans.

History lesson from Wikipedia:  Nidaros, Niðarós or Niðaróss was the medieval name of Trondheim when it was the capital of Norway's first Christian kings. It was named for its position at the mouth (Old Norse: óss) of the River Nid (the present-day Nidelva).

Although the capital was later moved to Oslo, Nidaros remained the centre of Norway's spiritual life until the Protestant Reformation. The Archdiocese of Nidaros was separated from Lund (in Scania) by the papal legate Nicholas Breakspeare in 1152, and the shrine to Saint Olaf in Nidaros Cathedral was Northern Europe's most important pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages. Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson led Norway in its attempted resistance against the Danish Reformation, and was forced into exile by King Christian III in 1537. The archdiocese was abolished and replaced with a Lutheran diocese.^[1]