The earliest existing historical records of the church date back to the year 1328, but the church construction has been dated to approximately the year 1140. The Romanesque stone church originally had a rectangular nave and a narrower, square chancel. During the 1830s, the western wall of the church was removed and the church was lengthened and small additions were built to the north and south, creating a cruciform design, nearly doubling the size of the church. A tower over the new western entrance was also constructed during this expansion project.[3]
In 1814, this church served as an election church (Norwegian: valgkirke).[4] Together with more than 300 other parish churches across Norway, it was a polling station for elections to the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly which wrote the Constitution of Norway. This was Norway's first national elections. Each church parish was a constituency that elected people called "electors" who later met together in each county to elect the representatives for the assembly that was to meet in Eidsvoll later that year.[4][5]
