National Register Listing

Viking Lutheran Church

a.k.a. South Viking Norwegian Lutheran Church

SE of Maddock, Maddock, ND

Once a common sight throughout the state, the Viking Lutheran Church represents a dwindling number of unaltered country churches built in a tradition popular in the early years of settlement. As rural populations diminish or relocate, many of these churches must be abandoned for more centrally located places of worship. Empty, they stand victims to vandalism and natural deterioration. The Viking Church, however, remains essentially unaltered and in excellent condition because its members, through three generations, have identifed themselves with the historic and cultural roots of the church.

Neither purely neo-classical nor Victorian Gothic, the Viking Church exhibits the same combination of exterior style and detail common to rural wood frame churches in the mid-west. This familiar combination of stylistic elements in the Viking Lutheran Church creates a powerful visual image of a lifestyle now threatened by increased urbanization in even the most rural states.

More than a visual image to its members, the Viking Church remains a center of social interaction and moral and religious instruction. Each Sunday, Viking Church members worship together as their ancestral families first worshipped. Newly arrived in 1887 from Spring Grove, Minnesota, these pioneer Norwegians organized themselves under a constitution, invited pastors from the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church and held services in the home of Timan Quarve. In the same year the first baptism was celebrated and months later, an infant was buried. Land donated by Andrew K. Gilbertson for the burial became the Norwegian's cemetery. Six years later, adjacent land was chosen for the church site.

In 1903, Viking Church proper was complete and by 1909, the church was part of a small trade center made up of a general goods store, blacksmith shop and meat market. All of these enterprises stood a few yards from the church. None are extant today.

The church was formally dedicated in 1909 when it hosted the first regular meeting of the North Dakota District of the Northwest Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Church of America. This meeting drew representatives from North and South Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. No longer an entity, the Norwegian Evangelical Church became part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church which is today part of the American Lutheran Church,

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.