The stave church at Gol was built in the 12th century. From the 1600s to early 1800s, the structure went through several renovations and alterations. In the 1870s, however, the congregation had become too large, so the old church was replaced by a new and bigger church.

In 1881, the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Norwegian Monuments bought the stave church, and King Oscar II offered to finance its re-erection in his new open-air museum at Bygdøy. Because the snow conditions for sled transportation was too poor, the disassembled church could not be moved to Christiania (Oslo) before in January 1884! In the summer that same year, the church was re-erected at Bygdøy.

When the stave church was disassembled in 1884, it had been and altered and remodeled both in 1664 and 1802. Hans Gude’s drawing from 1846 clearly shows this. When re-erected at Bygdøy, only the basic interior structure was reused. The exterior was modeled after Borgund Stavkirke in Sogn on the Norwegian west coast.